Well, it looks like you guys are all trying to achieve different things here, and hey, Premiere does require some extra steps for some things, just like FCP requires extra steps for other things, I’m not going to lauch another item by item war here; after all, until this month you couldn’t even mix different formats on the same FCP timeline…
Max,
Before you drag the clip to the timeline, go to clip > Audio options > Source channel mapping. Then pick mono. That will keep your file intact with two separate mono audio channels. Drag your clip to the timeline, then hold ‘Alt’ as you click to move or delete one sparately, how’s that ?
Vince