Manmohan faces no-faith motion on July 21-22

NEW DELHI, Saturday (AP) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government announced it will soon hold a parliamentary confidence vote to determine its fate and the future of a controversial nuclear deal with the United States.

The powerful lower house of India's Parliament will meet on July 21-22 for the vote, said a statement issued on Friday by Indian President Pratibha Patil. Earlier, Singh met with his coalition partners to assess their strength ahead of the vote, following a withdrawal of support by key communist allies opposed to the nuclear deal.

Activists from Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPM-L) New Democracy shout anti Congress-led UPA government slogans during a protest in New Delhi against the UPA goverment's Indo-US nuclear deal and demanded the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi yesterday. AFP

''I have no doubt that we shall prove our majority,'' the Press Trust of India news agency quoted governing Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi saying at the meeting. Singh's government would have to put off the U.S. deal and face early elections if the confidence vote is defeated. His five-year term ends next May.

The Congress party says it has secured alternative parliamentary support from new allies after the withdrawal of the communist parties, which normally vote with the government. The communists say the deal would undermine India's weapons programme and give Washington too much influence over Indian foreign policy. The government denies the charges.

If ratified, the agreement would reverse three decades of U.S. policy by allowing the sale of atomic fuel and technology to India, which has not signed international nonproliferation accords but has tested nuclear weapons. India, in exchange, would open its civilian reactors to international inspections.
The nuclear agreement also must be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers' Group of countries that export nuclear material before the U.S. Congress can approve it.