Wary of the Left and Right

Did the Government chicken out on clearing the Container Security Initiative at this week’s Cabinet meeting? It was planned as the ideal way to set the stage for all-out negotiations on the nuclear deal in Washington starting on Monday. The US has been nudging India to join the CSI, one of Bush Administration’s major post-9/11 counter terror initiatives. China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are already a part of it. The matter came up before the Cabinet last week but a decision was deferred by a week with the MEA’s treaty division still to work out some details on an agreement. The word now is the Government wanted to avoid political noise (read, the opposition of the Left and BJP) ahead of the July 19 presidential polls.