India, US, claim progress in nuclear talks

Washington, May 2 (UNI) The United States and India have reported progress in their talks on the proposed 123 agreement, a prerequisite for the implementation of the US-India civilian nuclear deal.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will visit New Delhi later this month to reach a final agreement.

A statement, issued by the US State Department last night, said Under Secretary Burns has completed two days of meetings with the Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and that the Bush administration was encouraged by the progress and is looking forward to resolving all outstanding issues in the weeks ahead.

In between his talks with US officials, Mr Menon took time off to call on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. ''I had a very good meeting with her where we looked at a broader relationship and expressed satisfaction at how it had developed over the last few years,'' he said.

Addressing a press conference, the Foreign Secretary said they had made considerable progress on the 123 agreement and they hoped to finalise it as soon as possible, quicker the better.'' He parried all questions relating to the dispute over India's insistence to retain its right to conduct nuclear tests, if necessary, in future, which is not acceptable to the US as such a provision would militate against American non-proliferation laws.

He also did not reply to the other points of disagreement including reprocessing of spent fuel and building of fuel reserves to ensure perennial supply to Indian nuclear facilities.

These issues appear to have created a stalemate in the negotiations over the 123 agreement and the experts of the two countries who met last month in Cape Town, had failed to make any headway.

Their failure apparently brought Mr Menon here for high-level talks.

Mr Menon, however, explained that he had a deal with Under Secretary Burns that ''they are not going to get into these issues until we have solved them all. When we have an agreement, we will tell you (media) all about them.'' According to him, there was no point in negotiating through the media.

''However, we both are confident that we can do this and we both wanted to do it very quickly,'' the Indian Foreign Secretary said.

When his attention was drawn to Mr Burns' recent public statement expressing "frustration" at the slow pace of the negotiations on the nuclear issue, he replied that, ''you should ask the people who were frustrated.'' He denied that the Indians had ever rpt ever been frustrated at any stage of the talks.

The Foreign Secretary reiterated that though considerable progress had been made on the 123 agreement, there are still some issues which remain to be settled.

When queried about domestic compulsions of Indian politics coming in the way of the agreement, Mr Menon said it was 'doable' and I am sure we can do it [clinch the deal].'' The civilian nuclear agreement which was first proposed about two years ago seeks to pave the way for the transfer of hitherto unavailable American nuclear technology to India even though New Delhi has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In return, India would have to accept international inspection of its civilian nuclear facilities but its military facilities would remain off-limits to inspectors.

UNI