By Arvind Padmanabhan
IANS
Heiligendamm : India and the US Friday sought to give a new push to their talks on the 123 pact to resume civil nuclear commerce, with both sides holding high-profile meetings on the margins of the G8 Summit here.
While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had an informal "pull aside" with President George W. Bush, National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan met with his US counterpart Stephen Hadley, as New Delhi and Washington tried to remove the irritants that are holding up the path-breaking agreement.
The meetings came after the previous talks over three days earlier this month in New Delhi between Nicholas Burns, Washington's chief interlocutor on the nuclear deal, and the Indian side led by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon had ended with little progress. Bush had also spoken to Manmohan Singh in May.
The 123 agreement, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, will enable resumption of nuclear commerce with India after a 30-year gap.
Officials said India wants to preserve its strategic autonomy and is unwilling to go beyond a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing, while the US wants to terminate the civil nuclear cooperation should India conduct a nuclear test.
India is also demanding the right to be given prior approval for reprocessing of US-origin spent fuel to run its fast-breeder programme, which Washington is not yet ready to accede to saying the issue will arise at a much later date.
The meeting between Manmohan Singh and Bush followed a statement by the G8, which said while it was aware of the steps India was taking for non-proliferation, it also wanted New Delhi to take a more forthcoming approach to address its energy needs.
"We look forward to reinforcing our partnership with India," the G8, comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US, said in what it called the Heiligendamm Statement on non-proliferation.
"We note the commitments India has made and encourage India to take further steps towards integration into the mainstream of strengthening the non-proliferation regime," said the statement adopted at the G8 Summit.
This, it added, would facilitate a more forthcoming approach from India towards nuclear cooperation to address its energy requirements in a manner that enhances and reinforces the global non-proliferation regime.
The G8 leaders also noted with concern the continuing threat of nuclear terror and said they were committed to broaden participation and further develop the global initiative in this area launched last year.
India, along with four other countries – Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa – attended the outreach summit of the G8 Friday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention on climate change set the agenda for the deliberations, officials said.
The prime minister also had brief interactions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, before he called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the host of the G8.
Earlier, the five outreach countries presented a joint position paper on issues like global governance, terrorism, international trade, cross-border migration, climate change, energy security and South-South cooperation.
The heads of state or government of G8 countries and the outreach partners also released a joint statement that pledged to cooperate in areas like promotion of research, cross-border investment, climate change, energy security and Africa's uplift.