US, India to resolve differences on nuke deal

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Washington, July 19: Top Indian and US officials will make a final bid today to break the deadlock in the talks over 123 agreement, required to implement the two-year-old Indo-US civil nuclear accord.

According to reports, the current round of discussions which began on Tuesday, have not been very helpful so far in finding a way out of the impasse reportedly over India's insistence to retain its right to test a nuclear device, if its security situation so demands, and fuel reprocessing.

However, the two sides now have acquired a better understanding of each others' stand on the contentious issues in the course of a series of formal and informal discussions that they had here in the last two days.

Before India's National Security Advisor M K Narayanan had met with his US counterpart Stephen Hadley yesterday, both the delegations called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which was described as an unscheduled meeting.

Though there was no official word on the trend of these talks, White House Spokesman Tony Snow, in reply to a question during his daily press briefing yesterday, remarked, ''Well, again, as we've said all along, the civil nuclear agreement is very important to us and we want to see it successfully concluded.'' Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is leading the Indian delegation comprising Deputy Chief of the Indian Mission in Washington Raminder Jassal, India's High Commissioner in Singapore S Jaishankar, India's Atomic Energy Commission official R B Grover, Joint Secretary in the America's Division of the Ministry of External Affairs Gaitri Kunar and Director in the Prime Minister's Office Venkatesh Varma.

The US delegation is led by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher and State Department's Office of Nuclear Security and Cooperation Director Robert Stratford as its members.

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chief Anil Kakodkar is also here for providing consultation to the Indian delegation.

UNI

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