New Delhi
7 May 2007
Piling the pressure on India, United States President George Bush on
Monday telephoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to push for early conclusion of the
bilateral "123 agreement" on civilian nuclear cooperation.
The statement put out by the Prime Minister's Office read: "The Prime Minister received
a telephone call from President George Bush this evening. [They] expressed happiness
at the strengthening of the bilateral relations and reviewed developments pertaining to
negotiations on bilateral civil nuclear cooperation."
White House Spokesman Tony Snow was more direct with the specifics of the
conversation between Mr Bush and Dr Singh. He told reporters in Washington, "They
welcomed the recent progress in the civil nuclear cooperation intiative. They also agreed
on the need for negotiations to conclude the bilateral agreement on peaceful nuclear
cooperation."
The statement from the Prime Minister's Office said that Mr Bush invited Dr Singh to visit
the US "again" and that the prime minister has accepted the invitation and mutually
convenient dates will be worked out. It also read, "The two leaders discussed matters
pertaining to the agenda of the G-8 Outreach Summit due next month [and they] also
emphasised the importance of a successful conclusion of the Doha Development Round
of multilateral trade negotiations."
President Bush's telephone call to Dr Singh, which comes ahead of their meeting at the
G-8 Outreach Summit in Germany next month, caps a series of communication back and
forth between New Delhi and Washington. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
called the prime minister just before Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon was
dispatched to Washington to give fresh impetus to the negotiations on the nuclear deal.
This newspaper has reported how Ms Rice called Dr Singh to "all but caution" him to
move ahead with the deal as the momentum gathered to push through the enabling
legislation (Hyde Act) would dissipate rapidly and adversely affect the vote on the deal at
the end of the bilateral negotiations.
Last week, American legislators wrote to the prime minister, asking India to back off from
her engagements with Iran to save the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the
US. The letter, the second after a group of senators had fired off a similar missive a
fortnight ago, drew criticism from political parties, with the CPI(M) joining the opposition
NDA to demand that the prime minister make a statement in Parliament to set the record
straight on the negotiations on the nuclear deal.
The Bush administration has said that the deal could be clinched by the end of this
month when US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R Nicholas Burns arrives in
New Delhi to give an impetus to the negotiations that are stalled on India's concerns
about reprocessing of spent fuel and future testing. These two issues remain sticking
points between the two counties. India has said that there can be no limitations on her
strategic programmes. "We want reprocessing rights upfront ... reprocessing is a non-
negotiable right," Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar has said. Other
nuclear experts have maintained that the Hyde Act seeks to lock India into a system of
constraints and its rigid provisions stipulate that all nuclear cooperation will terminate
and all imported reactors and materials would need to be be returned if India were to
test.
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