NEW DELHI, DEC 4: With US President Bill Clinton's proposed visit to India looming large on the horizon, Prime Minister A B Vajpayee has finally decided to get cracking on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by inviting Congress president Sonia Gandhi for discussions on the issue.Congress sources said this was the first formal initiative from the Prime Minister for a consensus on the CTBT. It has come after Sonia signalled to two visiting foreign dignitaries recently that her party was ``not opposed to the Treaty, per se''.However, no date has been fixed for the Vajpayee-Sonia discussions. The PM's invitation was for tea on November 28, a day before the winter session of Parliament began. But Sonia demurred on the plea that her two main foreign policy advisors, K Natwar Singh and Pranab Mukherjee, were both out of town.Congress sources emphasised that they have not cancelled the meeting but merely asked for a postponement till Natwar Singh returns on December 9.They maintained that the Congress was not against the treaty but wanted certain clarifications to be incorporated. Sonia is understood to have indicated as much to both United Kingdom Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Peter Hain and Dutch Premier Wim Kok.The sources said Sonia assured Hain, when he made a passing reference to the CTBT, that ``the Congress party was not against the Treaty per se''. However, it would like its demand for global nuclear disarmament within a limited time frame to be considered as well, she said, referring to the 1989 Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for Nuclear Disarmament.The Dutch Prime Minister also received similar signals when he met Sonia. But before she could elaborate her stand, Sonia was interrupted by Natwar Singh who apparently did not want her to commit herself on the Treaty. Interestingly, Singh was not present when Sonia met Hain.
