The communists issued the threat in the latest issue of party mouthpiece "People's Democracy," ratcheting up pressure on the government not to go ahead with the pact.

The threat follows US calls for India to conclude the deal quickly before November's American presidential polls.

"It is for the Congress leadership to decide whether it wants to be seen as kowtowing to the pressure of the Bush administration," said the party journal to appear this weekend.

"The future of this government depends on the decision they will take," the party said in the article headlined "Turning Point Has Arrived."

The decision by the minority government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has to be "quick and clear," said the article, adding "the Left parties will take all necessary steps to stop the government from taking such a harmful step."

National elections are due in just over a year and neither Congress nor the communists have been eager for early polls.

Congress has suffered a string of state poll drubbings while the communists are in trouble in their strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala.

But analysts say Congress may be gathering the courage to face the electorate sooner rather than later by presenting a populist budget last week that included a 15-billion-dollar loan bailout for farmers and income tax cuts.

The government "can take the bull by the horns... and say the deal is done," said B.G. Verghese, analyst at the New Delhi Centre for Policy Research. "We don't have a system of having ratification of treaties by the legislature.

"Then we'd have to see whether the Left's statements were huff and puff."

Meanwhile, Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat has asked Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee for an "urgent" meeting of a joint government-Left nuclear committee and has set a March 15 deadline.

The communists say the pact threatens India's weapons programme and would bring the traditionally non-aligned nation closer into the US embrace.

India's government rejects the claims and says the deal would give New Delhi vital access to civilian atomic technology needed to provide new fuel sources to keep the energy-hungry nation's economy growing strongly.

A Congress spokesman, M. Veerappa Moily, said the deal "will have to happen in the interest of the nation" and said failing to go ahead with it would "affect national prestige and honour."

Visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher told India to complete negotiations on the deal by the end of May so the US Congress could vote on it the next month, warning "time is tight."

The communists had earlier told the government it could proceed with talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to put India's civilian reactors under UN safeguards provided they were consulted before any new steps.

The pact requires final approval of the US Congress where it has bipartisan support.

But before then, India needs approval from the IAEA that now is near. It also needs sanction from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group which regulates global civilian nuclear trade.

The deal, struck in 2005, is regarded by the governments of the two nations as a cornerstone of warmer Indo-US ties. It is also seen by the Bush administration as one of its singular foreign policy achievements.

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