New Delhi
19 August 2007
South Block, which houses the Prime Minister's Office and the
Ministry of External Affairs, spent the weekend weighing its options, caught as it is
between a Left that opposes the nuclear deal lock, stock and barrel and a Right that
demands renegotiation of the 123 Agreement.
Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee told reporters on Sunday morning that the
government was making assessments and examining the proposed India-United States
civil nuclear cooperation agreement from all sides. Foreign Secretary Shivshankar
Menon briefed the minister on the situation.
Mr Mukherjee sought to suggest that the agreement was "signed" but there were still
some steps left to be taken before the nuclear agreement with the US could be
operationalised. He added that the government was holding talks at various levels within
the UPA and with the Left parties.
American diplomatic sources in New Delhi, however, told this newspaper that the text of
the 123 Agreement has only been "initialled". Text has been initialled and is frozen, they
said in response to a query whether the 123 Agreement was "signed", as Mr Mukherjee
said in an impromptu news conference.
To another query whether initialling of agreement precluded scope for renegotiation, they
merely recalled what US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told
an Indian magazine in an interview published over the weekend. Mr Burns said that the
US could not renegotiate it because the agreement was done and suggested that neither
government wished it to be renegotiated because it was now complete.
The American diplomatic sources said that it is for New Delhi to determine what fate will
befall the agreed text of the 123 Agreement if it does not take the next steps for
operationalising the agreement. "You'd have to ask the Indian government," was their
refrain.
Sources familiar with the protracted negotiations on the 123 Agreement, in turn, said that
the 123 Agreement was initalled last month in Washington and it was expected to be
"ready for signature" possibly when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited
India or when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travelled to Washington.
A source said: "There is nothing in any bilateral agreement to prevent renegotiation,
subject to consent of parties." Another source could not recall any agreement that
became as controversial as the 123 Agreement and wondered why the government
wanted to "rush it through".
New Delhi was in the process of ascertaining what will happen to the agreed text of the
123 Agreement if it does not make it to the US Congress by early next year although the
sources said that either side has the option of starting again with the same text or a
renegotiated text at a future date.
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