NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of the Left onslaught, Congress President Sonia Gandhi has come out in full support of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Indo-US Nuclear deal issue, saying the agreement fulfils all the assurances he had given repeatedly in Parliament. "Our Government has entered into this agreement after tough negotiations.

The agreement fulfils all the assurances that the Prime Minister has given repeatedly in Parliament," she said addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting, with Singh by her side. In the first CPP meeting after the recent row over the Prime Minister's daring the Left to withdraw from the coalition, Gandhi said "the objectives of the technological self-reliance and national sovereignty have been and will continue to be fully protected".

The Congress chief congratulated the Prime Minister and the team for "this accomplishment". "We are a democracy and differences in views are inevitable, but informed debate and discussion are the answer," she said, with apparently the Left criticism weighing heavily on her mind.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a significant meeting with CPI-M leader Prakash Karat on the Indo-US nuclear deal after which the party came out with a strong statement dismissing Singh's views in Parliament and asked the Government not to operationalize it.

The unscheduled breakfast meeting at the Race Course Road residence of the Prime Minister came in the midst of a war of words between the two sides topped by Singh's challenge to the crucial Left allies to withdraw support to the government on the deal. Singh is believed to have told Karat that he has fulfilled the assurances given to Parliament and the Left parties.

"What else can I do," he reportedly told the CPI-M leader seeking the Left parties' support on the deal. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee also attended the meeting after the PMO came out with a statement that Karat and Prime Minister "reiterated that efforts would be made to sort out the issues".

The PMO statement also said Karat told the Prime Minister that he would put the Prime Minister's points to the party's politburo meeting over the weekend. Hours later, the CPI-M politburo with a point-by-point rebuttal of Singh's statement in Parliament, saying it did not shed any new light on the agreement with the US that "calls for a re-assessment on our part".

"He (Singh) has reiterated his position on the agreement and has not addressed the issues that we0 have raised," it said. Deal is historic: PM Making a statement in Parliament amid walkouts by his Left allies and NDA opponents, slogan shouting and disruption of both Houses, the Prime Minister declared the Indo-US nuclear agreement a "historic deal.

He emphatically stated that he had ensured the autonomy of the country's strategic program and that the deal "does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests." Reading out a detailed statement defending the deal, he said, "There's nothing in the agreement that would tie the hands of a future government or legally constrain its option to protect India's security and defense needs. The agreement is good for India, and good for the world.

I will let history, I will let posterity, judge the value of what we have done through this agreement." In an obvious reference to the Left and UNPA members who charged the government with a sellout to the US, Singh said: "I urge those who question our commitment to an independent foreign policy to display the same degree of confidence in India as others from outside do."

He said that despite changes in government and political leadership, India had "tempered the exercise of our strategic autonomy with a sense of global responsibility and with a commitment to the ideals of general and complete disarmament, including global nuclear disarmament."

Our commitment to these ideals, he said, must continue with greater vigor "now that we are a nuclear weapons state" and that the possession of nuclear weapons "only increases our sense of responsibility and does not diminish it."

Driving home the point that he'd met his commitments to Parliament, Singh went into the specifics of the agreement: Envisaged in the agreement is full civil nuclear cooperation, covering nuclear reactors, aspects of associated nuclear fuel cycle, technology-transfer on industrial, commercial scale. India's right to reprocess US-origin spent fuel has been secured, and will be done at a new national reprocessing facility under IAEA standards.

Though US had a long policy of not supplying to any country enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production facilities, this agreement provides for such transfers to India through an amendment Enshrined in the agreement is India's freedom to develop strategic reserves of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of the country's reactors and to take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in case of disruption of foreign fuel supply.

He told Parliament that the agreement refers to India and US "as states possessing advanced nuclear technology, both parties having the same benefits and advantages, both committed to preventing WMD proliferation." India, he underlined, has "accepted only IAEA safeguards that will be reflected in an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA."

"We have not consented to any provision that mandates scrutiny of our nuclear weapons program or any unsafeguarded nuclear facilities. Nothing in the agreement would impinge on our strategic program, our three-stage nuclear power program or our ability to conduct advanced research and development," he said.