By IANS
New Delhi : Nicholas Burns, Washington's chief interlocutor on the nuclear deal, arrives on a two-day visit here Thursday in a bid to put back on track the talks to clinch the 123 pact to open nuclear commerce between India and the US, officials said Monday.
The visit comes after Indian and US technical experts held two-day talks on the bilateral civil nuclear cooperation pact in London May 21-22 during which India clarified its concepts on key issues like nuclear testing and demand for access to reprocessing technologies.
Burns, who is US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, had earlier put off his visit here indefinitely amid speculation that the 123 negotiations were skidding off the track with serious gaps continuing to prevent an amicable deal.
Ahead of his visit, Burns had said in a speech in Washington May 23 that the civil nuclear pact proposed by the two sides had become, in many ways, the symbolic centrepiece of India-US relationship.
"Like all good things, it will continue to require hard work and difficult compromises to reach completion," he had said in the lecture at the Heritage Foundation.
"Despite some difficulties of late, I believe we will reach the mountaintop and realize the enormous promise of this breakthrough agreement," he said, adding: "We are making progress in our negotiations and hope to conclude this historic agreement very soon."
India and the US are engaged in last-ditch parleys to reach a final 123 nuclear agreement before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush meet on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Germany early next month.
But officials familiar with the negotiations said some key differences remained, which were making the prospects of a deal by the time the G-8 summit takes place next month appear none too bright.
In a bid to preserve its strategic autonomy, India is not ready to go beyond a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing. But the US wants a clause inserted that will 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, which Washington is not yet ready to accede.
But the US, though, is understood to have shown some willingness to accommodate India's demand for fuel guarantees for the entire lifetime of the reactors that will be placed under international safeguards.
Earlier in May, Bush had telephoned Manmohan Singh to give an impetus to the 123 pact, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, that will be the sole legal document governing civilian nuclear cooperation between the two countries.
The two sides hope the 123 pact, once finalised, could be signed during a likely visit by Manmohan Singh to Washington in September.