New Delhi
5 March 2008
A visiting United States diplomat has said that India and the US are
"playing in overtime" and they need to take the next steps for operationalising a bilateral
nuclear deal without further delay.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia Richard Boucher on
Wednesday told reporters towards the end of his two-day visit to India that Washington
and New Delhi are under various time pressures.
India needs to conclude a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA). Only then can the US approach the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an
India-specific exemption.
Echoing the sentiments of US Senator Joseph Biden, Boucher said that the India-US
nuclear deal needed to reach the US Congress by June. Therefore, working backwards
from that, the NSG nod should be obtained by end of May.
The time table has to be accelerated, he said, adding that the IAEA pact is "a very
important piece of the puzzle" to put in place. It will determine how quickly the US can
get NSG nod and seek a final US Congressional vote.
Boucher, who acknowledged spending a fair amount of time discussing the nuclear deal
with the Indian officials here, said that there are "very tight" deadlines and Washington
would wait to hear from Delhi on the IAEA pact.
He was fairly certain that India will want to conclude the IAEA talks but he would not
speak with the same degree of certainty about Washington's chances of obtaining a
clean and unconditional exemption for India from the NSG.
In response to a question, he said that the nuclear deal seeks to be bring India into the
non-proliferation mainstream but it does not do it the traditional way. "This agreement is
a little bit different," he conceded.
He urged patience because the 45-member NSG operates by consensus and the US
might need to work that much harder to help NSG members understand the implications
of the deal for the global non-proliferation regime.
"There are members committed to non-proliferation goals and they will have a lot of
questions to raise ... a certain amount of patience [is required]," he said. To another
question, he said he did not know how China would respond.
(US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has said in Washington
that the NSG is going to be a lengthy and complicated process involving 45 countries
and therefore it is important for India to act quickly.
(Burns was quoted as saying: "If you [try] to estimate the time it will take the NSG and
the IAEA to act, we do need the Indian government to act within the next 30 days on the
IAEA process in order to move the other pieces forward.")
Taking off from where he left on Tuesday, Boucher iterated that the Hyde Act is a US
domestic legislation that allows a US Government to enter into cooperation of the kind
the George Bush Administration is seeking to have with India.
The Hyde Act, he continued, is an enabling legislation and he did not see a contradiction
in terms of its impact on the 123 Agreement, the text of which was frozen by both sides
in July 2007.
On Tuesday he said after a meeting with Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon that the
Hyde Act is domestic law and the 123 Agreement is international pact. "[We] can move
forward with both in a consistent manner," he said.
Asked what will happen to the nuclear cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test,
Boucher was evasive, saying that the US laws and the 123 Agreement are "clear on that
and I don't want to get into speculating".
Boucher sought to explain that the nuclear deal is important but it is only one of many
areas of the expanding ties between the US and India. The touchstone of the relationship
would be students and scholars, besides trade and defence cooperation.
He said metaphorically that the US-India relationship is like a stem of one flower with
lots of fruits, and some fruits are ripening faster than others. "I am optimistic," the official
replied when asked whether the nuclear deal will mature quickly.
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