Sleepless in Vienna: China threatens to leave for home, US works into the night

With Austria and Ireland still holding out and the Chinese delegation threatening to leave for Beijing, tough negotiations were on late into the night at the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna to forge a consensus to end India’s three and a half decades of nuclear isolation.

A new NSG draft was in the works and had been sent to Washington for clearance although India made it clear that there was almost no scope to revise the draft in substantive terms.

The Chinese, sources said, objected to what they called was the manner in which matters were being pushed on an issue they said involved the future of the global non-proliferation regime.

Well aware of the stakes in the Indo-US nuclear deal — and the tight Congressional calendar ahead — the “highest levels” in Washington got in touch with their counterparts in Beijing to get China to stay on by including it in the consultative process.

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Is it end-deal?

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.

The party’s top brass went into a huddle at 10, Janpath faced with perhaps the toughest choice since they took charge four years ago: give in to the Left and freeze the Indo-US nuclear deal to keep the government alive and a line with the Left open in an election year or seize the historic opportunity and stamp the party’s commitment to the “national interest.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who spoke to Congress President Sonia Gandhi on the phone, was learnt to have argued in favour of going ahead with the deal after the Left issued a statement that it was of the “firm opinion” that “the government should not proceed to seek approval of the text of the India-specific safeguards agreement from the Board of Directors of the IAEA.”

This Left statement came a few hours after the government deferred today’s UPA-Left meeting to June 25 as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s discussions with CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Monday and Tuesday failed to make any headway. The Left also said it did not get the full text of the agreement.

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Low on fuel and no sign of deal, nuclear power plants take a hit

With the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement still far from being done, a shortage in fuel supplies has resulted in a majority of nuclear power plants in India showing a decline in their operating capacities compared to last year. This has led to a 10 per cent reduction in overall power generation.

According to information available on the website of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the capacity factor of ten of the 17 units has gone down in 2007-08 (till February) compared to the previous year.

In some cases, like Unit-I in Kalpakkam, the fall in the operating capacity has been drastic, coming down to 36 per cent from 72 per cent last year. Unit-1 in Kakrapar has simi larly been operating at only 46 per cent of its capacity as compared to 67 per cent last year.

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