US, India said to make progress on nuclear deal

Washington, May 2: The United States and India made extensive progress during two days of talks aimed at salvaging their nuclear cooperation agreement and hope to complete the deal this month, the State Department said.

''The discussions were positive and the US is encouraged by the extensive progress that was made on the issues,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a written statement. ''We look forward to resolving the outstanding issues in the weeks ahead.'' Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who met Monday and yesterday with Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, will visit India in the second half of May to reach a final agreement, McCormack said.

Menon also met yesterday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the meeting was excellent, McCormack said.

McCormack provided no details about how major disputed issues in the agreement would be addressed. Earlier, he told reporters Menon had come to a dinner with Burns on Monday night with ''some constructive ideas.'' Both governments recently reaffirmed interest in the much-heralded deal, which would give India access to US nuclear fuel and reactors for the first time in 30 years, despite the fact that New Delhi tested nuclear weapons and never signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

But disputes about India's intentions on nuclear testing and reprocessing have not been resolved and both US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmoham Singh are under political constraints that limit compromise.

The pact was approved by the US Congress in December in a new law called the Hyde Act but the countries have since struggled to negotiate a bilateral agreement that lays down the detailed terms of nuclear trade.

India claims Congress imposed new conditions in the law but US experts say the Hyde Act reflects US obligations under other US law, the NPT and the 2005 US-India announcement that set broad political parameters for nuclear cooperation.

One major obstacle is the mandate that Washington halt nuclear cooperation if India tests a nuclear weapon as it did in 1998. US nuclear agreements with Japan and other countries contain that same mandate.

Other disputed points are the US refusal to give India prior approval to allow reprocessing of spent fuel with US components and to assure permanent fuel supplies.

US negotiators have been ''extremely creative'' in offering alternative phrases that might accommodate India's objections, experts have said.

But the Democratic-led Congress that took office in January is unlikely to approve a weaker deal than the one passed in December by a Republican-led Congress, they said.

Reuters

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