New Delhi
1 June 2007
India and the United States on Friday continued negotiations on the
delicately-poised nuclear talks in a bid to narrow down their differences on the twin
issues of testing and reprocessing of spent fuel. US Undersecretary of State for Political
Affairs Nicholas Burns spent the day crisscrossing the city, meeting key Indian leaders,
in an attempt to meet Washington's unofficial deadline of June 6-8 Group of Eight (G-8)
Summit in Germany where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George
Bush will meet.
The sticking points remained despite the marathon talks. "We are still working on it," a
source privy to the negotiations told this newspaper after Mr Burns called on Minister of
External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee and National Security Adviser MK Narayanan in the
evening. The Indian negotiating team regrouped late in the evening for discussions
among themselves.
Earlier in the day, both sides held another round of technical talks in the morning. Later
Mr Burns met with Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon over a working lunch at
Hyderabad House. The Indian delegation included Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
Special Envoy Shyam Saran, Indian High Commissioner to Singapore S Jaishankar and
three officials from the Department of Atomic Energy -- Mr RB Grover, Ms Nandhini Iyer
Krishnan and Dr Raghuraman. The US side included Richard Straford from the US
Department of Energy and Mr Ashley Tellis, senior adviser to Mr Burns.
Mr Burns also called on Union Minister of State of External Affairs Anand Sharma. After
meeting with Mr Sharma, Mr Burns told reporters, "I think we are working hard. We are
working well and let's hope it (final agreement) will be as soon as possible ... (the
agreement) is mutually advantageous and there is no question in my mind that with
continuous hardwork and good spirit we can reach a final agreement and we look forward
to that ... both of us understand how important this agreement is to our relationship ... it
is without any question in the best interests of both the countries."
In Washington, White House Spokesman Tony Snow on Thursday said that "some
technical issues" have delayed progress on the 123 Agreement to operationslise the
India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. "I can't give you a sense on the final
timing, but the government is clearly committed to it. We understand that the civil
nuclear agreement not only is important, but it's also a template for dealing with other
countries," Snow said. "Anytime you have an agreement this big and this ambitious,
you're going to run into some technical issues that make progress a little more halting
than you'd like it to be. But we're still committed to its success."
Strategic Forecasting, more commonly known as Stratfor, has said that the nuclear deal
was going to be a "long shot". A May 31 report by the US-based private consulting firm
reads, "Though cautious optimism exists all around that this stagnated nuclear deal will
see a big breakthrough, Washington already appears to be preparing New Delhi for
disappointment by giving quiet assurances that the United States is still firmly
committed to pursuing a strategic partnership with India even if the nuclear deal falls
through."
"India is not willing to concede on these US demands and is looking for some leeway
from Washington. That leeway will not be easy to come by, especially since US
President George W Bush knows the 123 Agreement is going to have to come back to
Congress for final approval. With the US election season already in full swing and a
vociferous nonproliferation lobby in Washington breathing heavily over the nuclear deal,
it looks like these negotiations are not going to be wrapped up as quickly as both sides
are hoping," the Stratfor report said.
It went on to suggest that the Bush administration appeared to be making moves of its
own to keep India interested in case the nuclear deal ends up taking even longer than
expected. It cited Bush's invitation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit his ranch
in Crawford, Texas, as a case in point. Less than two dozen world leaders have been
hosted by Bush at the ranch since he came into office in January 2001. "To get an
invitation to Crawford, one must be a close friend or ally of Bush (like British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi or Australian Prime
Minister John Howard), or someone Bush feels he must deal with for strategic reasons
(like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah). Singh likely falls into the latter category," the report read.
India and the US are aiming at sorting out differences particularly on issues like
reprocessing right, perpetuity of fuel supplies and continuance of the civil nuclear
cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test. India has been insisting on having
the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and is not ready to accept any legally binding
clause in the agreement that could cap its strategic nuclear programme.
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