Nuke deal on hold, panel to go into Left concerns

In a climb down, the Government today put on hold the operationalisation of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal pending the findings of a committee constituted to go into the objections raised by the Left parties.

"The operationalisation of the deal will take into account the Committee's findings," a statement read out by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said after a meeting of the Congress and Left parties, bringing to an end the three-week stand-off between the two sides on the deal.

The meeting decided to set up a committee, the composition of which would be announced shortly.

Though Mukherjee did not take any questions after the 30-minute meeting at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's residence, the Left leaders said the statement makes it very clear that the Government will not operationalise the deal till the committee's findings are known.

Ever since the details of the 123 agreement were made public, the Left parties had demanded that the deal should not be operationalised while the government maintained that there was no going back on the issue.

Matters took a serious turn when Singh dared the Left parties to withdraw support to the government on the issue and they hit back warning of serious consequences if the government went ahead with the deal.

The statement by Mukherjee said in view of the objections raised by the Left parties on the Indo-US bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation, it has been decided to constitute a committee to go into these issues.