New Delhi
11 July 2007
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday evening telephoned
United States President George Bush to take stock of the negotiations on the proposed
civilian nuclear cooperation agreement ahead of the talks between officials of the two
countries in Washington next week.
A statement released by the Prime Minister's Office read, "Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh had a telephone conversation with United States President George Bush earlier
this evening. The two leaders expressed satisfaction at the strong India-US bilateral
relationship and spoke about the forthcoming discussions between the National Security
Advisers of both countries, scheduled for next week."
The statement added, "They were of the view that these discussions will reinforce our
strong bilateral relations. The Prime Minister and the US President also said they both
looked forward to continuing their own discussions at their next meeting." Prime Minister
Singh is likely to travel to the US for the United Nations General Assembly session in
September this year.
National Security Adviser MK Narayanan will hold talks with his US counterpart Stephen
Hadley in Washington on July 16.
The Prime Minister recently said that two or three issues remained to be resolved to
finalise the "123 Agreement". The negotiations between India and the US have failed to
yield any breakthrough due to differences on issues like reprocessing of spent nuclear
fuel and India's right to conduct a nuclear test in the future.
For her part, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that the nuclear deal
would come through by the end of this year. Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon has
said that Ms Rice could be expected to visit India by the end of this month or in early
August for further discussions but New Delhi has since qualified by suggesting that Ms
Rice's visit would depend on the outcome of the talks between Mr Narayanan and Mr
Hadley.
Mr Narayanan and Mr Hadley last met on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8)
Summit at Heiligendamm in Germany last month. Mr Menon and his American
counterpart, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, met in New
Delhi ahead of the G-8 Summit but they failed to make much progress on narrowing down
their differences on the negotiations for the 123 agreement, the operational
pact for the proposed civilian nuclear cooperation agreement.
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