PM Manmohan Singh sought to give another push to the India-US nuclear deal by telling Congress chief Sonia Gandhi that efforts to operationalize the pact should not be called off even in the face of Left opposition. The PM expressed his views when Sonia met him on Wednesday morning. Singh also told Sonia the party needed to take a view soon because no purpose was served in holding talks with the Left when no progress was being made.

R. K. Pachauri Why is a progressive nuclear initiative bringing out the worst in Indian politics?

Even as the Indo-US nuclear deal is stuck in what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls "domestic politics', External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is headed for uranium-rich Australia for a three-day visit beginning this Saturday. The visit, between June 21 and 24, will be important from India's nuclear point of view since Australia is a key member of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG). The fact that the UPA-Left committee on the nuclear deal will meet on June 25, immediately after Mukherjee's return, makes its timing even more significant.

Countdown Begins: You can't go to Vienna, says Left, leaving UPA with only two options: either go for broke or give in, last a full term; next meeting June 25 What the Congress kept delaying finally happened today: its moment of reckoning has come, after the Left made it clear it would not let the Government go to Vienna to confirm the safeguards agreement, the key first piece in the operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Related Stories

The Manmohan Singh government reckons it is make or break time for its civilian nuclear deal with the Bush administration. The bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement (the

A businessman of Indian origin was sentenced to 35 months in a US federal prison on Monday for allegedly exporting ballistic missile technology to India in a case that calls into question talk of a strategic relationship between the two countries and the salience of American nonproliferation laws.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, who said that his party's efforts would be at disentangling India from the US and Israel, ruled out any concession to the government at the meeting of the nuclear deal on Wednesday. "We will not allow the government to wrap up the safeguards agreement with the IAEA,' he said.

If the Left parties could successfully block the Indo-US nuclear deal by threatening in all seriousness to withdraw their outside support to the UPA goverment, why can't they adopt the same tactic to force the Centre to rollback the steep hike in the prices of petroleum products, including LPG? Is the worsening plight of the majority of the country's people, already reeling under the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities and whose miseries are now compounded by the rise in petroleum prices not as serious an issue for the Left as the nuke deal?

PM must give a final push to nuclear deal There are media reports that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will make a last effort to rescue the nuclear deal from limbo and call an all-party conference to seek the understanding and support of political leaders. If this report is correct, it is a welcome move and he ought to have done it much earlier. Now he has only a very narrow window of opportunity to get the deal through while President George Bush is in office. There is no doubt that a deal on such favourable terms is extremely unlikely with any other US administration.