PM, Bush to meet on G8 sidelines: Menon

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, June 5 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who leaves here on a four-day visit to Germany to attend a meeting of G8 leaders with India and four other outreach nations at Heiligendamm, will have a hectic schedule, holding talks with Presidents George Bush of the United States and Hu Jintao of China, besides UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders.

Confirming the meeting with Mr Bush on June 8, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters today that the Indo-US nuclear deal would figure at the talks, but there would not be any negotiations on the issue.

''I don't think we expect to discuss the nuclear issue'' as it would be a ''pull-aside'' meeting and not a formal bilateral discussion, Mr Menon said.

''It would be mentioned in the meeting'' as it was a very important part of the Indo-US relations. It was not a place where the two leaders could be expected to hold negotiations on the deal, he explained.

According to official sources, the two leaders were expected to ask the two sides involved in the negotiations to speed up the process of finalising the 123 agreement, necessary for the implementation of the nuclear deal.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said on Sunday that the US laws had come in the way of an outcome at the talks visiting US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns had with Mr Menon and others last week.

Dr Singh would attend a meeting of leaders of the outreach nations -- China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, besides India -- at Berlin on June 7 to discuss trade and development issues, including the Doha round of the WTO talks.

The Prime Minister would also have talks with Nigerian President Umar Musa Yar'adua.

The series of meetings would provide an occasion ''to review at a very high level the nature of world economy and other issues faced by the international community'' and these indicated India's interest and willingness to deal with global problems, Mr Menon said.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the host nation, talked to Dr Singh on the phone on the expectations from the G8 summit and the meetings with the outreach nations. It was a ''very good conversation,'' the Foreign Secretary said.

Mr Menon said India welcomed President Bush's proposal to have meetings at Washington later this year with the leaders of India, China and other fast developing economies to discuss the climate issue, the main theme of the G8 summit.

India was ''comfortable'' with many of the issues Mr Bush proposed to raise at the meetings, including energy security and transfer of clean energy technology.

''We are ready to talk (on climate change) anywhere, any time'' as India would judge the process on the basis of substance and on what the country was ready to agree.

''We have our own ideas too,'' he said as was in the case of China and Japan which had also reacted to the Bush proposal.

According to the Bush initiative, India and China should also be involved in the global efforts to reduce the emission of greehouse gases as such nations were increasingly responsible for producing carbon dioxide (CO2) due to the high economic growth and rapid industrialisation.

Mr Menon, however, said any decision on arresting global warming should be done under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCC) as was in the case of the Kyoto Protocol, which had left out India and China while setting emission reduction targets for industrialised nations.

UNI

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