The meeting of the UPA-Left panel on the India-US nuclear deal on Wednesday could well be the final opportunity for the controversial pact to go through before both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US president George Bush reach the end of their tenures in office. The government is preparing for a fresh attempt to wear down the Left resistance by arguing that though the deal was US-specific, getting a safeguards agreement with IAEA would open the doors for nuclear cooperation with other nations too. In a fortuitous development for the government, Russian ambassador Vyacheslav Trubnikov also backed the deal. The Russian envoy said,