Webinfosys's Local News : Worried allies turn to Sonia to prevent nuclear fallout

NEW DELHI: Facing the prospect of the UPA government's sudden collapse as a consequence of inking the India-US nuclear deal, the allies on Monday brought pressure on the Congress leadership to prevent such a fallout and pointed to more urgent issues like prices and oil market volatility.

Three leaders of the UPA alliance — Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan — met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi separately and sought to impress upon her the need to avert early elections. "This is no time for elections," Lalu said coming out of Sonia's 10 Janpath residence and called for handling issues like prices and oil-market volatility.

"There is no problem that cannot be resolved through dialogue," he told reporters. During his talk with Sonia, the RJD chief reportedly cautioned against alienating the Left.

Paswan, his one-time rival in Bihar politics, interestingly, held similar views. The Lok Janshakti Party leader said that while everyone in the UPA alliance was in favour of the deal, it would be a mistake to part company with the Left on this issue.

"The nuclear deal is in the national interest but it is not correct to dub the Left anti-national because they are opposing it," he told reporters after his meeting with Sonia. Paswan, sources said, told Sonia that the time was not favourable for going to elections.

Though Pawar was evasive about his talk with the Congress chief, he, sources said, favoured keeping the alliance intact and avoiding early polls. The NCP leader, who had a meeting with his close party colleagues, later met CPM general secretary Prakash Karat. This was the second meeting between the two at Pawar's initiative in the past few days.

Top Left sources said that there was no fresh proposal from the UPA and added they would prefer to wait for foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee's return from Australia for starting the dialogue. Pawar has taken the position that while the nuke deal was most desirable, it could not be at the cost of the UPA-Left alliance.

Another UPA partner, IUML, has taken a similar stand asking for a dialogue within the ruling coalition to thrash out differences. "We are party to the deal, but we feel that those who have questions about it must be heard," party leader and minister of state for external affairs E Ahmed said. The UPA partners' meeting with Sonia on Monday evening seemed to have set the tone for the negotiation process which would further step up with the arrival of M Karunanidhi.

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