New Delhi
2 June 2007
Fifteen months to the day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
United States President George W Bush reached an understanding at Hyderabad House
on the separation of Indian nuclear facilities into civil and military ones, India and the US
on Saturday concluded the fourth round of formal talks at the same venue without a
breakthrough on operationalising the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement.
Despite three "intense, productive and constructive" days of discussion, as Foreign
Secretary Shivshankar Menon chose to describe the negotiations with the US delegation
led by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the two sides were
not able to make considerable progress on the 123 Agreement to their mutual
satisfaction. Any decision therefore is not likely when Prime Minister Singh meets
President Bush on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) Outreach Summit in Germany
next week. No dates have been set for the Prime Minister's visit to the US. Instead US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been invited to visit India at the end of July or
early August.
Foreign Secretary Menon told reporters that there were issues where there was a "gap"
between the Indian and American positions on the terms of civilian nuclear cooperation.
"There were several issues which were still open when we started these discussion and
we have managed to remove some of the isues [but] we still have a few issues left
where there is some distance for us to travel," he said. He suggested that both sides
"were still in the process of discussing various issues", including reprocessing of spent
nuclear fuel. He would not say whether the persisting differences on reprocessing or
testing have led to delays but he indicated nevertheless that the progress could have
been quicker if the issues were not "interlinked".
Mr Menon indicated that there was a political understanding on both sides and the task
before their respective negotiating teams was to reduce that understanding into a legal
framework. He insisted that the US Administration has assured the Indian side that there
was nothing in the Hyde Act that prevented them (the US) from implementing their
obligations under the joint statement of July 18, 2005 rpt 2005 or the separation plan of
March 2, 2006 rpt 2006. "Am I satisfied with the visit? Yes. I think we have achieved
what we set out to do in this particular round. We have agreed that we will continue the
discussion [for a] succesful conclusion," he observed. He also made India's position on
sequencing issue clear, saying India wants the 123 Agreement to be finalised before
negotiations could begin with IAEA on safeguards agreement and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG) could be approached formally for adjustment of its rules.
The US Embassy, in turn, said that Mr Burns had "productive" meetings in New Delhi
over the last three days. "The American and Indian delegations had useful discussions
and made some progress on the civil nuclear agreement. While there has been good
cooperation, more work remains to be done to complete arrangements that will permit a
civil-nuclear agreement to be finalised between the United States and India. We look
forward to a final agreement as it is indisputably in the interest of both governments," it
said.
The US Embassy went on say, "He (Burns) had productive meetings with Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee, National Security
Adviser MK Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and other senior
officials." It suggested that Mr Burns used his visit to discuss other areas of interest to
both the US and India, besides civilian nuclear cooperation. "[Mr Burns] visited New
Delhi for meetings with Indian government and political leaders to review the new global
partnership the US and India have established across a broad range of areas," the
statement added.
Mr Burns rounded off his visit by calling on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Leader
of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh. He also met with former national
security adviser Brajesh Mishra in a bid to soften the BJP's stand on the India-US
nuclear cooperation agreement. However, the BJP has indicated that there was not going
to be any change in its position.
Another BJP leader and former minister of external affairs Yashwant Sinha told this
newspaper that as long as the Hyde Act and the US Atomic Energy Act of 1956 were
there, the US Administration would need to work within the four corners of those Acts and
that, he asserted, "clearly militates against our national interests".
Mr Sinha said, "The government should not go ahead (with the deal) ... there is no point
in signing ... it should call an end to the negotiations." He said that there were
fundamental differences after the Hyde Act came into being and there was no way those
differences could be reconciled. he said that India was a nuclear weapon state and she
must have the "patience to be recognised by the world as a nuclear weapon state,
whatever time it takes."
"We can't put paste back into the tube," he said, alluding to India's nuclear weapon
status, "unless the world agrees on disarmament." He suggested that the best recourse
for the Manmohan Singh Government would be to take people and Parliament into
confidence and state clearly the problems it encounters in the negotiations with the US,
instead of negotiating in a hush-hush manner.
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