Brushing aside the government's last-ditch efforts at persuasion ahead of Wednesday's meeting, the Left parties on Tuesday maintained that they continued to oppose the Indo-US nuclear deal, including the India-specific safeguards agreement with International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Left's stand was once again conveyed to the government when Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi on Monday night. Mukherjee, who heads the United Progressive Alliance-Left Committee on the nuclear deal, is understood to have urged the Left parties to allow the government to seal the India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA, a plea that was rejected by the Left leader. "The safeguards agreement with the IAEA is a step towards implementing the deal."
"I cannot say anything now", Mukherjee said in Dehradun on Tuesday when asked by media-persons to comment on what transpired at his meeting with Karat.
In Delhi, Karat had an hour-long meeting with his CPI counterpart A B Bardhan on Tuesday , though the latter maintained that the nuclear issue did not come up for discussion. "You know what our stand is. There is no change as far as that is concerned. We will take that stand tommorrow also," Bardhan said after the meeting. Asked whether Mukherjee made any proposal at his meeting with Karat, the CPI leader said "there are so many proposals. We are not in favour of operationalising the deal."
