Nuclear breather

Published : Dec 07, 2007 00:00 IST

The UPA government and the Left strike the middle path on the India-U.S. nuclear deal, and this gives the Congress a respite.

in New DelhiCongress president Sonia

WHEN preparations for the plenary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) began in mid-September, a sense of disquiet was the predominant mood among a sizable section of the party functionaries involved in the exercise. The national political scene at that time was marked by the intense disagreement between the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and the Left parties on the India-United States civilian nuclear deal. With no sign of abatement of the tussle, the message that went down the line from the Congress leadership then was that the plenary could well mark the beginning of life without power at the Centre for the party. The plenary, it was signalled, should become the launching pad for the campaign for mid-term elections.

However, when the plenary was finally held on November 17, the mood was not one of disquiet. Instead, there was a kind of enthusiasm about the greater role that Rahul Gandhi, party president Sonia Gandhis heir-apparent and recently appointed general secretary of the party, would play in the organisation. The forceful speeches by Sonia Gandhi and other leaders attacking the principal Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), did herald a political campaign of sorts for the next general elections. The Manmohan Singh-led UPA Ministry was very much in office and the speeches of Congress leaders reflected the hope and confidence that the government would last its full term, until May 2009.

The reasons for the change of mood were not far to seek. The sixth meeting of the UPA-Left Consultative Committee on the nuclear deal was held on November 16, a day before the AICC plenary, and the committee gave the clearance for the government to go ahead and discuss the India-specific safeguards of the nuclear deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Secretariat. The understanding drawn up by the committee was that the government will proceed with the talks [with the IAEA] and the outcome will be presented to the committee for its consideration. The committee would examine the text before it is initialled by the government and the IAEA or before it is put up before the IAEA Board of Governors. The committee also decided to examine the impact of the provisions of the U.S. Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement on the safeguards issue.

These decisions emphasised the fact that the leaderships of the Union government and the Left parties have managed to strike a middle path on certain aspects of the nuclear deal. Both sides have travelled some distance from the positions they held when disagreements on the deal surfaced and later intensified through August and September. During the early stages of the tussle, there was a time when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pursued the deal with such zeal that he was even ready to risk the Lefts withdrawal of support to the government to fulfil his commitment to the U.S. There was a period when the Left parties objected to initiating any discussion with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) countries. Clearly, the middle path on the IAEA discussions was forged through deliberations at the six meetings of the UPA-Left Consultative Committee as well as the many individual and group interactions that the leaders of the UPA and the Left held during the past three months.

Whether the middle path will ultimately result in the nuclear deal becoming operational is in the realm of conjecture at the moment. According to a senior Congress leader, it is too early to say whether things will eventually turn in favour of the deal. But he added that there was no doubt that the government had got some breathing space to advance some of its manoeuvres on the deal. In his perception, the UPA-Left Consultative Committee has split these future manoeuvres into two stages. The first stage involves discussions between the government and the IAEA, presenting the results of its discussions before the Consultative Committee for scrutiny. The second stage, which would follow after the scrutiny, may or may not lead to the initialling of the IAEA safeguards text and sending it to the IAEAs Board of Governors, he said. The deal can be made operational only after the Board clears the safeguards text.

Talking to mediapersons after the November 16 meeting, A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), pointed out that the Lefts clearance for the talks with the IAEA was under the premise that nuclear fuel was not like apples or oranges, which one could buy any time and anywhere, and that India needed to fulfil certain formalities with international agencies in order to become eligible for fuel supply from multiple sources. This, he pointed out, was an overwhelming argument and was what led to the clearance. The government will bring the text of the discussion to the UPA-Left Consultative Committee. If the text is found to be inconsistent or if it compromises our position with regard to the 123 Agreement, then the committee will take appropriate measures, he added.

While the views expressed by the senior leaders of the Congress and the CPI present a realistic and objective assessment of the situation following the November 16 statement of the UPA-Left Consultative Committee, the capitals political and diplomatic circles are agog with interpretations of the statement and related developments. One view is that the process of discussing with the IAEA Secretariat, getting back to the UPA-Left Consultative Committee, and eliciting its clearance would be such a time-consuming affair that the deal would die a natural death on the U.S. side. The U.S. has to finalise and operationalise the deal before February 2008, when the processes for congressional and presidential elections are initiated there.

Interestingly, the view that the deal will have a natural death is held by both politicians and diplomats who support the deal as well as by those who oppose it.

On the other hand, there is also the view again shared by a section of politicians, diplomats and scientists for the deal and those against it that allowing the government to hold formal meetings to discuss the safeguards agreement with the IAEA would ultimately lead to the operationalisation of the deal, provided the government is able to get through the first round of discussions with the IAEA before the second week of December. According to this view, a special meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors would require less than three days to pass a text prepared by the Secretariat.

This view visualises the sequence of events as follows: The draft of the safeguards agreement is readied by the government and is placed as required before the UPA-Left committee for discussion by the second week of December. Simultaneously, the government moves for clearance from the Board of Governors of the IAEA. The Left parties may withdraw support to the government, but the IAEA Board of Governors would have sufficient time to clear the text (in less than three days) and pave the way for the operationalisation of the deal. It is not clear which of these scenarios will ultimately play out in reality.

There is little doubt that major political considerations played an important part in the adoption of the middle path by the leadership of the Congress and the Left parties. Two issues came up prominently as part of this consideration, according to indications from leaders of the Congress and other partners of the UPA, such as the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).

First, the Congress and other partners of the UPA were clear that there should be no political crisis at the Centre in the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections, to be held in mid-December. Secondly, UPA constituents such as the RJD, the NCP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) consistently pressed the leaderships of the Congress as well as the Left parties to avoid midterm polls. These parties were of the view that domestic political considerations are more important than the deal.

Sections of the Left, especially Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders such as former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, were also of the view that midterm polls should be avoided. Though Basu has been expressing this view for over three months, the BJP leadership has repeatedly asserted that the Left has also become afraid of midterm polls and has got into a deal with the Congress essentially because the CPI(M) is facing political trouble in its stronghold of West Bengal on account of the developments in Nandigram. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat responded to this by saying that there was no deal with the Central government on Nandigram and that the CPI(M) was not going to allow national policy to be influenced by developments in one block. He also pointed out that the negotiations on the nuclear deal have been going on since September.

According to a senior NCP leader, the November 16 statement is in many ways a continuation of the October 12 climbdown on the deal signalled by Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. He observed: The Prime Minister said then that his government was not driven by a single issue and that failure to carry the deal was not the end of life. Now, the Left parties are showing similar political magnanimity by allowing the government to go ahead with the IAEA talks. The leader added that a realpolitik evaluation of the November 16 decision would rate it as a face-saving device for the Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh can now tell the international community that there was an effort at fulfilling the commitments on the civilian nuclear deal, in spite of strong opposition from within the country, he said.

At the operational level, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee played an important part in working out this middle path. He held a series of meetings with Left leaders individually and in groups to arrive at a functional formula that would be acceptable to the Prime Minister and his close associates as well as other segments of the UPA and the Left parties. At one point, the Ministers efforts were perceived as ineffectual, even leading to the cancellation of the November 16 Consultative Committee meeting. However, the discussions he had with Karat and Bardhan resulted in the current formula. This led to a luncheon meeting of Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and the Left leaders and the revival of the November 16 meeting.

Clearly, Pranab Mukherjees efforts and their success show that even in terms of personalities the quotient of politics is steadily rising within the Congress and the UPA. And because of that the Congress was able to hold its AICC plenary in relative peace, which must certainly help the party plan its future course of action in a relaxed and effective manner. But, the Congress and its leadership have, many times in the past, shown a tendency to forget the most obvious political lessons. Whether such forgetfulness would be repeated is indeed a moot question, the answer to which may be available through developments on the nuclear deal in December.

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