UPA Buys Time, Pranab Wants Left To Defer Pullout Indrani Bagchi | TNN July and September are emerging as key months in the nuclear-deal calendar that has been worked out between foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and key officials. India is likely to start lobbying in earnest with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an exemption from July. The prime minister wants to kick off the effort at the G8 summit itself. That will be a formal opening of negotiations on the NSG. If the government works out an understanding with its allies now, it is also expected to submit the IAEA agreement to the board of governors which can be ratified by the middle or third week of September. The IAEA board will take at least 45 days for the ratification, and August is a holiday month for Europe and the US. Which means the US should be able to call an NSG plenary by end-September or early-October. No matter how you look at it, that's going to be the difficult part because 45 countries are not going to look at the nuclear deal in the same way that the US, India, France and Russia do. However, swallowing scepticism and doubts, in the best-case scenario, the deal should get a thumbs up by November at the latest. That means the lamest of lame duck US Congresses gets to ratify the three components of the nuclear deal by January 19, 2009, the last day of Bush's term in office. Ambitious? Ridiculously optimistic? Of course. And getting so far so fast is an uphill battle, the likes of which has never been attempted by Indian diplomacy before. What does this mean in the Indian political calendar? Well, what Mukherjee, the point man for the deal, is trying to get from the Left is this