Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury after the UPA-Left meeting in Delhi on Friday. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, Nov. 16: The Left believes its position against the India-US nuclear deal is unaltered despite its shift of stance on talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency for a safeguards agreement to allow inspections of India’s civilian nuclear facilities.

The Left’s “calibration” of its position allows the Centre to take a small but nervous step in executing the deal. It is not a guarantee that the deal will be implemented.

“Yes, we have come to an understanding with the government that they can go to the IAEA secretariat to discuss a safeguards agreement,” CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said immediately after the meeting with the government this evening.

But the nod to the government has come with caveats, Karat has reasoned.

“The outcome of the talks will be brought to the (UPA-Left) committee. The text of the agreement will not be ‘frozen’ or initialled or taken to the IAEA board of governors before it is presented to the committee. We have brought the IAEA safeguards agreement within the purview of the discussions in the committee,” he said.

To its own supporters, the Left will explain that the joint committee has emerged as a powerful body that will vet a safeguards agreement on which the future of the civilian nuclear deal depends. The terms of reference of the committee were being changed and expanded.

But the Left has shifted from its original stand — that any move to negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA means that the deal is being “operationalised”.

The outcome of today’s talks means that the negotiations with the IAEA have been broken up into two stages, a senior leader of the party said.

The schedule to implement the deal did not originally envisage a political vetting of the agreement and the processes needed to execute it. Now, the procedure of negotiating with the IAEA involves four measures, according to the leader.

These are: (a) a draft to be prepared with the IAEA secretariat (b) a vetting of the draft by the UPA-Left committee (c) “freezing” of the draft and (d), after a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group and a positive vote in the US Congress, an additional protocol with the watchdog.

This will send the timeline for the execution of the deal into a spin, the Left believes. Originally, the government was working to get the safeguards agreement by October, the NSG waiver by November and the up-down vote in the US Congress by December/January. The Left is largely satisfied that it has stalled the process so far.

Asked what if the government puts the deal on auto-pilot after negotiating a safeguards agreement and disbanding the UPA-Left committee, a CPM leader said: “Then, the government itself will be on auto-pilot.”