Congress gasps for breath with soaring inflation. puts nuke deal on back burner

Though the soaring rate of inflation is causing distinct uneasiness in the Congress over the extent to which it can go in pressing ahead with the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement, the party is clearly not ready to blink as yet.

On a day when Congress president Sonia Gandhi held detailed discussions with senior party leaders over the future course of action on the nuclear deal, party sources maintained that the Congress still considered the nuclear deal to be in national interest and fully backed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was in favour of wrapping up the issue before the end of this month.

But it was evident that the party was also finding it a little difficult to take a final call on the issue and risk the collapse of the government, especially at a time when the aam aadmi is feeling increasingly distressed over the incessant rise in prices of essential commodities.

Party sources said that the Congress was yet to make up its mind, notwithstanding strong advocacy by a section of party leaders to defy the Left and confirm the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They said that the party was in favour of going to Vienna immediately but they would prefer to take the Left along.

Whether to defy the Left or wait for political consensus to emerge on the deal will be decided only after the UPA-Left committee meeting on June 25, according to highly placed Congress sources. There is no decision on this till now, they said.

According to a section of Congress leaders, there was a sense of urgency in UPA-Left negotiations because Prime Minister Singh wanted to take a call on this issue before heading for the G-8 meeting next month, but "there is nothing like reaching a point of no return".

"Deadlines are always set in a given context and are changed in the changed context. Therefore, it would be incorrect to say that if we don't go to Vienna this month, the nuclear deal will be dead. We want to go there by all means, but it's not a question of life and death," said a senior Congress leader.

This slight but perceptible change in the tone of Congress leaders who saw no retreat from this point and predicted early elections till the other day has much to do with the mounting inflation figures, which are only expected to go north. A concerned Congress president had called Finance Minister P Chidambaram to her residence Saturday evening to know when he expected the inflationary trend to come down. There is increasing anxiety in the party about the aam aadmi getting impatient with unabated inflation and the same has been conveyed to the Congress president by senior party leaders, said sources.

A prominent section of the Congress is also not very enthusiastic about the back channel negotiations initiated by NCP chief Sharad Pawar and his emissary D P Tripathi with CPM general secretary Prakash Karat to break the current impasse over the nuclear deal.

Congress sources asserted that "only" External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Defence Minister A K Antony had been authorised by Sonia Gandhi to hold talks with the Left. Any other leader taking on the job of an interlocutor was doing so on his own volition and the Congress should not be assumed to be involved in it "directly or indirectly," they maintained.

The assertion came in the wake of slight tension in the Congress camp following the efforts of Pawar to postpone the date of the next UPA-Left meeting from June 25 to June 28. Pawar, who is also the president of Indian cricket board, is scheduled to be in London on June 25 for an ICC function. While the Left was willing to go along, Congress today stuck to the original date of June 25.

On Saturday, Pranab Mukherjee spoke to Pawar. who was in Pune. and assured him that they could remain in touch over phone on June 25. Meanwhile, Mukherjee himself left for Australia on Sunday. He will be back on June 24.