The Left parties will have to decide upon their next step on the nuclear embargo very soon as the UPA government categorically told their supporters that it has to go to the IAEA to start the India-specific safeguard discussions in mid-November. Trying to pass the ball to the Left?s court, the government, in the last meeting of the Left-UPA political committee on Indo-US nuclear agreement, said it cannot wait endlessly and will have to persuade the IAEA to consider India?s case in its next board of governor?s meeting.

The next meeting of the IAEA board of governors will begin on November 22. The government will have to present its papers on India-specific safeguards at least three days before the meeting. If that did not happen, the only option before the government is the second next meeting of the board of governors scheduled in February 2008. In the meantime, at a public rally in Jhajjar at Haryana, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has blasted at the critics of the nuclear deal.

?Such elements are not only enemies of the Congress, but enemies of peace and development. We should join hands to give them an appropriate answer,? she said.

Meanwhile, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee met senior CPI(M) leaders from West Bengal?Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Biman Basu at Kolkata on Sunday. None of them, however, revealed the details of the discussion.

The Left parties have been maintaining that the government should not formally hold any discussions with the IAEA so that the operationalisation of the deal can begin. In the last meeting of the Left-UPA mechanism, the Left had asked for the government?s plan at IAEA and reiterated that it should not hold any ?formal? discussion with the international nuclear agency.