International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei starts a visit to India today that may exacerbate tensions between the government and its communist allies over the country's nuclear policy.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needs the consent of the IAEA to bring into effect a nuclear agreement with the U.S. that would allow India to purchase reactors from suppliers including France's Areva SA and Japan's Hitachi Ltd.

India may be forced to call early elections if the communists, whose support provides Singh with a parliamentary majority, don't yield to the government's plan to start negotiations with the IAEA. The leftists oppose the talks because they say a nuclear agreement would weaken the nation's ability to follow an independent foreign policy.

``We have told the government not to negotiate with the IAEA,'' said D. Raja, leader of the Communist Party of India, one of the four leftist parties that support Singh's government. ``There is no change in our stand. If they proceed further, we will then find our next course of action.''

The government and the communist parties will meet today for the fourth time in the past month to iron out their differences on the issue. The leftists in August had warned the government of ``serious consequences'' if they proceeded with the nuclear accord with the U.S.

For now, India will not start ``negotiations of any kind'' with the IAEA, said S.K. Malhotra, spokesman of the Department of Atomic Energy.

Safeguards Plan

ElBaradei is scheduled to visit the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai today before he proceeds to New Delhi tomorrow for talks with Prime Minister Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Singh's five-year term ends in May 2009.

The IAEA chief, ``is definitely not coming for sightseeing in India and he will of course have talks with the political leadership,'' said Abani Roy, leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, another communist party. ``We have told the government categorically not to take up the safeguard issue with the IAEA. If they proceed, they will face the consequences. There is hardly anything left for reconciliation.''

India needs to negotiate a safeguards plan with the IAEA and get the support of the Nuclear Suppliers Group before the accord, a key element of U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy, can be approved by the U.S. Congress.

`Vital Interests'

``Those who advocate the deal should know that India is capable of developing nuclear energy primarily on a self-reliant basis,'' the four communist parties said in a joint release in New Delhi yesterday. ``We need not surrender our vital interests to America on this plea.''

The comment came after Sonia Gandhi, whose Congress party leads the federal coalition, was quoted by the Times of India and other national dailies as saying that critics of the nuclear agreement are enemies of development.

Nuclear sanctions were imposed against India after it tested atomic bombs in 1974. Under the current accord, the U.S. would accept that India, which exploded nuclear devices again in 1998, operates its civilian and military nuclear programs outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Nuclear energy makes up 3 percent of India's total electricity generation, while in Japan it's about 30 percent. India, which expects to accelerate economic growth to 10 percent by 2012 from the record average expansion of 8.6 percent in the past four years, is turning to nuclear power to make up for an electricity shortage that reached an eight-year high last year.