By Arvind Padmanabhan
IANS
Berlin : Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left here Saturday after two days of hectic parleys on key geopolitical issues during which efforts were also made to put back on track talks on the India-US 123 pact to restart nuclear commerce between the two countries.
Manmohan Singh, who was in Germany for the G8 Outreach Summit to push the stand of developing nations on some key geopolitical issues, met US President George W. Bush at Heiligendamm and discussed how the nuclear pact could be sealed.
After several bilateral and multilateral discussions here and at Heiligendamm, India said its own position and those of developing countries were convincingly conveyed to the rich nations on matters spanning climate change to development.
India along with four other countries – Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa – attended the outreach summit of the G8 Friday. The G8 comprises of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US.
Both India and the US sought to convey the message that they were optimistic on clinching the path-breaking nuclear cooperation deal despite some major hurdles in the way.
"We think it is doable," India's Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said, after Manmohan Singh met Bush informally for around 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G8 Outreach Summit in Heiligendamm, some 250 km northeast of here.
Indian National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan met his US counterpart Stephen Hadley as New Delhi and Washington tried to remove the hurdles that are holding up the path-breaking agreement.
The meetings were significant since they came after Nicholas Burns, Washington's chief interlocutor on the nuclear deal, and the Indian side led by Menon, made little progress during their talks in New Delhi that ended earlier this month.
Developing countries also made some major contributions on key geopolitical matters when they proposed an international fund to finance the development of technologies to harness resources like biomass available with them.
They also made it clear that in addressing issues like climate change there must be a common but differentiated responsibility between the rich and the developing countries on how to lower green gas emissions.
Manmohan Singh's intervention on climate change set the agenda, in fact, for future deliberations, officials said.
The prime minister also had brief talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and newly-elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy before he called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the host of the G8, to end his engagements here.
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.