Hear us out on Nuke deal: Govt to Left

NEW DELHI: With Left parties sticking to its tough position on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, government on Monday told them to refrain from taking any precipitating decision before "hearing us out".

It fielded Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal for the job who said "misgivings" about the deal had arisen out of "preconceived notions" which could be addressed during a discussion in Parliament.

He said the Indo-US civil nuclear deal would not be operationalised before December next year and exuded confidence that negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would go on as scheduled in September.

The Left parties want a halt to operationalisation of the deal and negotiations with IAEA and NSG until objections to the agreement were taken care of.

Sibal rubbished the contention that the 123 agreement bound India to the Hyde Act, the American law on the deal, and the pact did not allow transfer of reprocessing and heavy water technologies as "assured" by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Parliament.

Launching a spirited defence of the deal, he said the Prime Minister had given an assurance about uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, nuclear power reactors and reprocessing rights "which are granted in the 123 Agreement".

"The 123 Agreement goes much further than the Prime Minister's assurances to Parliament," Sibal told reporters here.