Following India's nuclear tests last year, it has been under pressure to sign the CTBT by the USA, which sees nuclear bombs as the modern-age "white man's burden". India was one of three countries which did not sign the CTBT when it was passed at a global conference in 1996. The USA has to ratify the treaty before September, and if it does not, it is afraid the near unanimous backing the CTBT has will unravel. Yet its own ratification hinges on the signing of the treaty by India (along with Pakistan).

Despite political opposition to signing the treaty - the Vajpayee government has been taking steps (notably the interlocutions between foreign minister Jaswant Singh and US deputy secretary of State Strobe Talbott) to suggest it will sign the CTBT. Commentators have been warning the government not to do so, but their pleas appear to be falling on deaf ears.

The conventional wisdom was that the Congress ought to let the government sign the CTBT, and then lambast it for selling out the country while privately exuding relief that it was saved the trouble of this inescapable task.

The Congress, however, had noted that 1999 was turning out to be a year with a difference for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Far from looking precariously perched at the head of a 13-party coalition, he was settling down, particularly after his historic visit to Lahore and the Minar-e-Pakistan.

The feeling grew within Sonia's circle, Jaal learns, that were Nawaz Sharif to pay another visit, Vajpayee would score another success. And then, if India signed the CTBT, quickly followed by an announcement of a visit to India by US President Bill Clinton, it would only help solidify the continuance of the BJP government.

Say what??? Yes. Sonia, after seeing the way that Vajpayee's stock has soared after his Pakistan visit, apparently does not disagree with speculation that India's party of patriots will be able to sell the line that they did not sell out, but that rather, they had brought India closer to the US, the world's sole superpower.

Many in the BJP have in fact once again started to propagate Samuel Hungtington's clash of civilisations theory, in which India is suggested as an anti-Islamic ally of the US in the next century. Thus the fact that India has forfeited an independent security option will be played down, and the hope that India will become a major trading and security partner of the US will be played up.

Sonia fears that Vajpayee may pull it off - his party is the least vulnerable to accusations of anti-nationalism. And a few more foreign policy successes, crowned with Clinton's personal seal of approval, would mean it would be extremely difficult to dislodge him at the time of her choosing. His settling down after the Pakistan trip has already made her efforts to topple him uncertain.

Furthermore, if the US is so keen that India sign the CTBT that it is willing to make a gesture like a Presidential trip to New Delhi, then why not the Congress take credit? Sonia has been thinking, and the word is, why not indeed?