New Delhi
21 October 2005
By Seema Mustafa and Ramesh Ramachandran
The Manmohan Singh government is all set to work out the modalities for
implementing its part of the civilian nuclear deal with the United States before the visit by
President George W.Bush to India in February-March next year. Foreign secretary Shyam Saran
and US undersecretary for political affairs Nicholas Burns confirmed at a joint press conference
that both countries will have "deliverables" before the presidential visit and were in agreement
about the time schedule that leaves India with four months to separate the military and civilian
nuclear facilities.
Mr Burns was confident that despite the recent decision by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to defer
a decision on India to next May, it will be persuaded to change the rules to allow sale of nuclear
technology and fuel to India. He said that he did not consider the NSG's failure to reach a
decision as an "impediment" and if necessary a meeting could be convened before May to
enable the member nations to remove the restrictions that had been imposed on India in the
wake of the nuclear tests. Mr Burns said that his government was "looking forward" to the US
Congress passing the legislation to remove the restrictions on India early next year.
Mr Saran and Mr Burns who had "intensive" discussions on Friday took care to stress that
every aspect of the July 18 joint statement was important, and that both sides were committed to
its total implementation. Iran was singled out for attack by the US official in response to a
question where he made it very apparent that there could be a vote at the IAEA board of
governors meeting at Vienna on November 24 if Iran does not come back for negotiations with
the European Union countries. He said that the US was very concerned about the behaviour and
attitude of Iran as not a single country wanted it to have nuclear weapons as was indicated by
the Vienna vote where all countries voted against or abstained with the sole exception of
Venezuela.
"Iran must be feeling isolated and fairly alone, " Mr Burns said adding that it was still possible
to find a peaceful solution if it re-enetered negotiations with the EU countries. He said that Iran
was funding and supporting terrorist groups in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon and its behaviour
was also unhelpful in Iraq. He made it very apparent that India was on board along with the
other nations on this, and that Iran did not have supporters on the nuclear issue. "If it does not
come back (to the negotiations) then there is every reason to believe that there will be a vote for
which the majority already exists," he added. Mr Saran when asked by the US official to add his
comments, laughed and said that the question had been addressed to Mr Burns. The US official
was not willing to comment on the India-Iran gas pipeline saying that the project had not been
finalised as yet. He maintained that no other issue was connected with the India-US nuclear
agreement.
Mr Burns said that both delegations had a three hour discussion on just the nuclear aspect of
the joint statement. The joint working group will meet over the next few months to monitor the
modalities and the sequencing of implementation of what both officials admitted was a
"complicated issue." The government is being asked by the US to separate the civilian and
military nuclear facilities and sign the additional protocol allowing IAEA inspections of its plants.
Nuclear scientists here have questioned the deal maintaining that the civilian and military
nuclear program are closely integrated, and that separation will be extremely cumbersome as
well as phenomenally expensive.
Neither side spelt out the details but it was made very clear that the process of implementation
would begin now, with India moving to meet its end of the deal in specific terms. The US is in a
visible hurry to clinch this so that as Mr Burns told the Asia Society at New York prior to his
arrival here, both India and the US could move on to a larger partnership. "Some have said that
this initiative weakens global nonproliferation efforts.This is simply not the case. India has
demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting fissile materials and nuclear technology in
general, so we believe it is in the international community's interest that New Delhi's isolation
be brought to an end. India's recent vote to find Iran in non-compliance with IAEA standards was
an even more dramatic example of where it stands on the critical effort to prevent a theocratic
Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability", he had said.
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