US Ambassador to India David C Mulford met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and is understood to have sought to know India's mind on the future of the agreement.
NEW DELHI: With uncertainty over Indo-US nuclear deal, US Ambassador to India David C Mulford met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday night here and is understood to have sought to know India's mind on the future of the agreement.
During the 45-minute meeting, Mukherjee is understood to have conveyed to Mulford the political compulsions the UPA government have in not going ahead with the deal for now but expressed the determination to push it through at later stage.
The US envoy articulated his country's main concern about the future of the deal in the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's remark at a Leadership summit here that non-implementation of the agreement was not the end of life.
The meeting between Mukherjee and Mulford came on a day when US President George W Bush spoke to Singh, now in Nigeria, over telephone and heard the Prime Minister talking of 'certain difficulties' in respect of operationalization of the nuclear deal.
Seeking to put a lid on widespread speculation that an early poll was imminent given the confrontation between the government and the Left over the deal, the Prime Minister and
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had left little doubt that the UPA leadership was unwilling to sacrifice the government at the altar of the nuclear agreement.
The Prime Minister had said if the deal did not come through it would be a disappointment but significantly added, "in life one has to live with certain disappointments and move on".
"Elections are still far away. The government has still one and half years to go to complete its term. I hope and expect we will stay the course," the Prime Minister said.
For her part, Gandhi had said the Left parties, which were opposing the deal, were not being 'unreasonable' and that the government was not looking for a confrontation with them.
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