India's negotiations with the IAEA for a country-specific safeguards agreement is complete and the UPA-Left committee will meet “shortly” to decide on the future course of action on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday.As reported in The Indian Express, the UPA-Left committee is expected to meet next week and a new round of negotiations between the contending partners in the ruling alliance will begin. After a series of hectic negotiations in November 2007, both sides had agreed to meet again once the talks with the IAEA are complete. “That stage is over now because that negotiation has been completed,” Mukherjee told reporters at the sidelines of a function in the capital. A day after the Left threatened to withdraw support to the UPA Government if it proceeded with the nuclear deal, both sides toned down the rhetoric. Mukherjee said elections would take place as scheduled in 2009, while CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said the “agenda of the Left is not pulling down the Government but stopping the deal”. Yechury said the Government should abide by the committee’s views on the safeguards agreement.In an interview to NDTV, Mukherjee said Left’s threat of withdrawal to the Government if it proceeded with the deal was not surprising. “Many unforeseen things happen in coalition politics but the position of Left parties is well known to us,” he said referring to the Left ultimatum.Addressing another Left concern, Mukherjee said India had conveyed to the US its inability to work within “any specific time-frame”. The key interlocutor between the Left and the Congress on the deal, Mukherjee said neither the Congress nor its allies was thinking of elections before 2009 and there was no question of “sacrificing” the Government for the Indo-US nuclear deal.“I don’t think so, because we want to have elections in due time (in 2009),” Mukherjee said. “I do not visualise that anybody is thinking of early elections. None of the coalition partners or coalition supporters are talking of early elections. Nobody is talking of holding elections now. There is no talk of sacrificing the Government for something,” he said when asked if there was a debate in the Congress about whether the deal was worth sacrificing the Government for. “The UPA has agreed in writing that the Government will proceed on the basis of this Committee’s findings. If the Committee says it is not correct, then the Government has to follow it,” Yechury said.
