By Manish Chand, IANS
New Delhi : With the Left parties giving a green signal to the government to go ahead with the IAEA negotiations, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar will go to Vienna Tuesday to discuss an India-specific safeguards agreement with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Kakodkar will be accompanied by the Department of Atomic Energy’s strategic planning group director Ravi B. Grover, a top source in the DAE told IANS.
Kakodkar, India’s atomic energy chief and a key figure in finessing the 123 India-US civil nuclear pact, will meet IAEA Secretary General Mohammed ElBaradei Wednesday.
The source, however, refused to comment on any time-frame for completing the IAEA negotiations.
Kakodkar’s meeting with ElBaradie will take place a day ahead of the regular board meeting of the Vienna-based body. The board meeting of the IAEA will discuss implementation issues on current safeguards and technical co-operation projects undertaken by the agency, especially issues relating to Iran.
Indian officials held informal talks with IAEA’s ElBaradei when the latter visited India last month. ElBaradei hinted it will be a matter of weeks or even less for the two sides to finalise the IAEA negotiations. “It could even take less than 72 hours,” a reliable source said.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters Monday that the government will be “talking to IAEA very soon,” but he did not set a date for the crucial talks that will pave the way for operationalisation of the India-US civil nuclear deal.
Manon said discussions with the IAEA would be followed by talks with other countries, including the US, in the 45-nations Nuclear Suppliers Group.
The 123 pact will be sent to the US Congress for a final up and down vote after the NSG agrees to adjust guidelines in India’s favour allowing for the resumption of civil nuclear commerce between New Delhi and the nuclear cartel.
Menon also underlined the importance of building a domestic consensus on the nuclear deal, which is being criticised by the chief opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Left allies of the government on grounds that the deal may hurt India’s strategic programme.
“We will try to build as broad a consensus as possible within India…We also do a domestic process, talking about the issue,” he said.
The government decided on approaching the IAEA for negotiations on an India-specific safeguards agreement, that will include fuel supply guarantees for the lifetime of 14 civilian nuclear reactors India will place under international inspection, came after the Left parties relented on the issue Friday.
The Left parties, however, gave a go-ahead to the government to hold talks with IAEA in a joint meeting on the condition that the text of the final safeguards pact be shown to them for approval before sending it to the IAEA board of governors for signing.
It’s hard to predict whether the landmark deal, that promises to end India’s international nuclear isolation, will reach its fruition with senior Communist leader Prakash Karat suggesting in a TV interview that his party was “determined” to oppose this deal, which he stressed was “bad for our country.”
The conditional nod by the Left is seen by political observers as merely a face-saver for the government as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh staked so much of his personal prestige on it.