The UPA government will approach the IAEA for approval of the India-specific safeguards agreement only after securing the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha in the special session being convened on July 21, highly placed sources said on Friday.
The circulation of the safeguards agreement to members of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not not amount to seeking approval but was only a procedure meant to give time to the IAEA members to study the document, sources said.
They also dismissed reports that there was any disconnect between the political authority and the executive, which approached the IAEA on Wednesday for circulation of the document. They were answering criticism that the government's action on Wednesday initialling the draft agreement and giving it to IAEA for members' consideration went against External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's assurance that the government would seek clearance of the deal by the IAEA only after securing the confidence vote in Parliament.
Giving the sequence of events since the formation of the UPA-Left committee to go into the concerns of the Left parties on the deal in August last year till its collapse this week, the sources said the outside allies had no no right question the government's action once the ties between the two sides had broken and the political mechanism on the issue had broken down.
