NEW DELHI, July 5: A key regional party in India said on Saturday that it supports a nuclear deal with the United States, hinting that the party could provide the crucial numbers needed to push the deal through India’s parliament.

The socialist Samajwadi Party’s senior leader, Amar Singh, told reporters in New Delhi that the agreement is in “the interest of the nation.”

The last several days have seen a frenzy of political activity as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has tried to cobble together political support for the nuclear deal ahead of his meeting with US President George W. Bush on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit in Japan that starts on Monday.

The deal has been hailed as the cornerstone of a new strategic relationship between the US and India, but India’s main communist party leaders say it would undermine India’s weapons programme and give Washington too much influence over its foreign policy.

The communist parties, which have provided crucial backing to Singh’s Congress party-led coalition government, have threatened to withdraw support in parliament if the government goes ahead with the deal.

Without their support, the government could topple and face early elections later this year.

However, with US elections due in November, time is running short to ratify the agreement before a new US administration comes to power.

The Samajwadi Party and Singh’s Congress have exchanged angry barbs in the past but have been holding meetings in New Delhi over the last few days because the socialist party’s backing could offset the potential loss of communist allies.

The Samajwadi Party leader did not say outright on Saturday that its 39 legislators would throw their weight behind the Congress party in parliament.

Amar Singh said there was no formal agreement with the Congress party so far and added that his party’s support was not needed yet because the communists “have not made any moves but only threatened” to withdraw support.

But he did say that his party was convinced of the value of a civilian nuclear agreement with the US.

The government has assured the Samajwadi Party that there is nothing in the agreement with the US that would place a ban on future Indian nuclear tests or affect Indian decision-making in foreign policy.

If ratified, the agreement with Washington would reverse three decades of US policy by allowing the sale of atomic fuel and technology to India, which has not signed international non-proliferation accords but has tested nuclear weapons. India, in exchange, would open its civilian reactors to international inspections.

For India to move ahead with the deal, it needs to sign a separate deal with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency before the US Congress can approve the pact. —AP