By IANS
Shimla : A day after India and the US completed talks on a civil nuclear cooperation pact without any apparent breakthrough, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee Sunday said that although "certain issues" needed to be resolved there were no "roadblocks" in the ongoing negotiations to finalise a bilateral agreement.
The minister, however, did not give a timeframe for finalising the agreement that would pave the way for the resumption of civil nuclear commerce between the two sides after a gap of nearly three decades.
"There is no roadblock in the ongoing Indo-US nuclear deal talks, but certain issues need to be resolved," Mukherjee told reporters in an attempt to dispel the impression that the bilateral negotiations were floundering over the so-called 123 pact, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act.
"Since we have committed to parliament in March this year, we would like to arrive at a certain consensus on this issue," he said.
"There are certain legal constraints on the part of the US administration and we hope that the ongoing negotiations will resolve this. But we can't give a possible timeframe before the deal is final," the minister said.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and US chief interlocutor for the nuclear deal Nicholas Burns concluded three days of talks Saturday – the fourth formal round between the two sides – to iron out differences over issues like India's insistence on its right to test a nuclear device and reprocess US-origin spent fuel, but could not reach a final agreement on these sticky points.
Although both sides claimed to have made some progress, talks appeared to have hit an impasse mainly on account of the US' reluctance to accommodate India's demand for right to process spent fuel that is necessary for its indigenous three-stage nuclear energy programme.
Differences over India's insistence on what it claims to be its sovereign right to test a nuclear device and demand for lifetime guarantees of nuclear fuel for reactors it would place under international safeguards also remain to be resolved decisively.
The US is keen to insert a clause in the 123 pact that would entail the cessation of civil nuclear cooperation in the event of India testing a nuclear device – a condition that is simply not acceptable to New Delhi.
With the talks deadlocked over these difficult issues, both sides are banking on a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George Bush on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Germany later this week to resolve the differences.