Ahead of their crucial meeting with the United Progressive Alliance on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left parties will meet on Monday to chalk out their line of action on the issue. The government is likely to brief the Left parties on the over three-month long negotiations it held with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the safeguards agreement during the UPA-Left committee meet.
Senators Joseph Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Wedensday, said if the deal is not taken up in the US Congress by June and the process completed during the tenure of President George W Bush, any new US administration will renegotiate the deal.
The four-day talks that concluded on Saturday were originally considered to be a final round but the draft text could not be completed, IAEA sources said, adding that there was also no meeting point on the issue of corrective measures to be undertaken in the event of stoppage of fuel to power plants.
What does the prime minister's position on the nuclear deal mean? What does the Congress want from the issue? What does the Left stand to gain? Sheela Bhatt explains.
"'If the Congress agrees to freeze the deal, then, no country in the world will deal with India in future. Every time you go for negotiations, other countries will ask 'Have the Left parties given you permission to have the deal?'"
"Our position is unchanged. You can draw your own conclusions from that," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi.
Says it will make the world a better place
India is planning a 15-fold increase in its civilian nuclear power programme in the next two decades, the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Thursday. In its latest report titled 'Year in Review 2008', the International Atomic Energy Agency said while no new reactors came online anywhere last year.
Is the military junta in Myanmar trying to acquire a military nuclear capability with North Korean assistance? Or is North Korea trying to shift some of its nuclear facilities to Myanmar to protect them from a possible attack by the US?
"This work could not be the work of Khan alone," Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed El Baradei said.
The chief inspector said that the main problem lies in locating such chemical weapons as the deadly VX nerve agent Iraq was known to have in 1998 but are not on the Iraqi declaration.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to reply to the debate on the Iran issue in both Houses of Parliament Monday.
The meeting came two days ahead of a debate in Parliament on India's stand over the Iran nuclear programme.
The remarks came as Left parties asked the Union government to have David C Mulford recalled while Opposition BJP sought an all-party meet over the controversial remarks by the US Ambassador to India on the Iran issue.
The Left parties, which met in New Delhi on Friday, said they "would not do anything" till Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh came back from the G-8 summit in Japan next week.
Govt 'will have to repent' if India repeated the vote against Iran, the Left parties said.
The international community must focus not only on recipient states but on supplier states as well, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said.
However, the Left parties were unconvinced and said that the government gave the impression of being totally aligned with the United States, thus violating the common minimum programme's pursuit of an independent foreign policy.
The CPI(M) has said that India has caved in to US pressure.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was close to finalising the text of India-specific safeguards but the ball is now in India's court to ready the agreement. Sources at IAEA said both sides are close to a final text but India has to confirm to the IAEA that there is an agreement on the text. Until then the agreement can not got forward.
As India's negotiation with International Atomic Energy Agency is in its concluding stage, the Communist Party of India on Wednesday said the Left parties are determined not to allow the government to go ahead with the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
'We just have too many challenges ahead of us. We just cannot look backward,' says Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Mohamed ElBaradei.
The military conflict around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine -- Europe's largest nuclear plant -- has raised fears of an accident worse than the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
The United States has lifted most of its sanctions against Iran after a UN watchdog reported that Tehran had complied with a nuclear weapons deal.
The nuclear fuel centres will ensure sustained supply to all countries developing atomic energy.
India will complete the process of putting its 14 civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards by the year end as part of a commitment made under the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Signalling the continuity of policy, the new government has ratified the Additional Protocol, a commitment given under Indo-US nuclear deal by the previous dispensation to grant greater ease to International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor India's civilian atomic programme.
Putin also told his French counterpart that Kyiv does not comply with the agreements reached with Moscow on the evacuation of civilians from combat areas, the Kremlin said.
INSAG is a wing of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
At the end of the day, for many worldwide, the ongoing mutual attacks between Israel and Iran would seem a contest devoid of any moral high ground and only a bout between two ordinary adversaries, one that nevertheless risks spinning out of control into a larger conflagration, notes Shyam G Menon.
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