Manmohan Singh to discuss Indo-US nuclear deal with Bush on July 9

New Delhi, July 4 : Prime Minister Manamohan Singh is expected to meet US President George W. Bush on July 9 on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Hokkaido in Japan.

Singh is expected to discuss the progress of the Indo-US nuclear deal with Bush.

Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters here that the Indian government would like to go ahead with the deal, but cannot give timeframe.

"We will go ahead with it as soon as we can. Once we take a decision to approach the IAEA, we will let you know. The US was committed to getting India exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for nuclear commerce under July 2005 civil nuclear cooperation agreement," he said.

Menon said India was in touch with the NSG and would proceed on the deal as early as possible.

Many world leaders going to attend the Hokkaido summit are also the members of the NSG, he added.

The Prime Minister, during his three-day visit, would discuss various topics including climate change, energy and food security with G-8 leaders and those from the outreach countries like China, Brazil and South Africa.

India has been attending G-8 outreach meetings since 2003 and an important outcome of the last year's G-8 summit in Heiligendamm in Germany was the initiative to launch a high-level dialogue between the G-8 and the five-outreach countries to be completed at next year's summit in Italy.

Menon said India has also come out with a national action plan for climate change and it would like to see an international framework for climate change in place and would work for this.

The action plan declares that India's greenhouse emissions will not be more than the emissions of developed countries.

ANI