NEW DELHI, Oct 12: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Friday he would not force through a controversial Indo-US nuclear deal if it meant his government’s downfall.
India’s communists have repeatedly threatened to withdraw support for the Congress-led minority government if it pushes ahead with the landmark pact, which would allow energy-hungry India to buy civilian nuclear technology.
Singh said he hoped “reason and common sense” would ultimately prevail over the Indo-US agreement, which he described as “an honourable deal that is good for India and good for the world.” But Singh, who personally oversaw two years of talks that led to the pact, indicated he was not prepared to sacrifice his government over it.
“If the deal does not come through, that is not the end of life,” Singh said. “It will be a disappointment. In life, one has to live with some disappointments.” “We are not a one-issue government,” he said, insisting that the government, now more than halfway through its five-year mandate, would survive its full term until 2009 and rejecting snap polls.
“Elections are still far away. The government has still one-and-a-half years to complete its term. I hope and expect we will stay the course,” Singh told a conference organised by the Hindustan Times newspaper.
It was the first time that Singh, who had staked his political credibility on the nuclear agreement had publicly evoked the possibility that the deal might not go ahead.
His words marked a sharp change in tone from two months ago, when he dared the four-party Left bloc to withdraw their support in parliament for the coalition if they disliked the deal.
The softer tone came with Congress’s allies within the coalition displaying cold feet about fighting early elections.
Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress party and regarded as India’s most powerful politician, echoed Singh, saying she was “not in favour of an early election.” The government which came to power in 2004 has different projects to complete and “we will go till the end of our term,” she told the same conference.
Gandhi said Congress would continue talks with the communists in a bid to reach a compromise over the deal, first agreed in principle in 2005 with US President George W. Bush.
The communists support the government in parliament but are not part of the coalition.
The pact would end more than three decades of isolation under which India was refused help for its civilian energy programme after it first tested an atomic weapon and refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
India’s communists say the pact would pull traditionally non-aligned India too close to the United States and compromise its strategic sovereignty.
Many analysts had said the row looked like the beginning of the end of the Congress-Left alliance.
To make the deal operational, New Delhi has to negotiate an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), pledging to place some of its nuclear plants under safeguards.
India has been under pressure from Washington to secure the agreement with the IAEA before the US gets caught up in next year’s presidential elections.
The US Congress must give final approval to the deal but that could technically be given any time up to the expiry of the current Congress in late 2008, officials have said.—AFP