By IANS
New Delhi/Mumbai : Amid a continuing standoff between the government and its Left allies over the India-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will hold talks with UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei Thursday that could set the stage for negotiations with the IAEA.
ElBaradei begins a four-day visit to India from Mumbai Monday night – a trip that will be watched closely in Washington as well for any concrete sign of the beginning of New Delhi’s safeguards negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
ElBaradei, a staunch supporter of the path-breaking India-US nuclear deal, kicks off his official engagements Tuesday morning with a visit to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and meet scientists and officials there. He will later go to the Navi Mumbai-based Electron Beam Centre for Material Processing.
He will get to see India’s innovations in peaceful uses of nuclear energy when he visits the Tata Memorial Centre’s Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer, where he will be handed over an indigenously-designed cancer teletherapy machine called Bhabhatron.
“The machine, developed by BARC, will thereafter be sent to Vietnam by IAEA,” said a Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) official.
The IAEA chief will be in New Delhi Wednesday and may go to Agra to soak in the beauty of the immortal Taj Mahal. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to meet ElBaradei the same day.
The prime minister has invited ElBaradei for a lunch meeting at his 7 Race Course residence Thursday afternoon, the DAE official told IANS.
At the meeting, the prime minister is likely to signal the government’s resolve to go ahead with safeguards negotiations with the IAEA despite Leftist objections.
The timing of this meeting is significant. A war of words between the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and its Left allies over the nuclear deal has escalated.
Acutely aware of the Left’s unbending opposition to the nuclear deal and its ultimatum on freezing any negotiations with the IAEA, the government has been in denial about any move to begin safeguards negotiations for 14 of its civilian nuclear reactors it plans to put under IAEA safeguards in phases.
The government has sent in a non-paper to the IAEA and is keen to finalise the safeguards agreement that will weave in India-specific fuel guarantees expected to be completed by the end of this month so that the deal can be discussed at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in mid-November.
No formal negotiations have begun with IAEA, the government has repeatedly stressed.
Once these two steps are completed, the 123 bilateral agreement will be presented to the US Congress for an up and down vote. If India sticks to the October-end timeline for the IAEA negotiations, there is a strong likelihood that the deal, which will give New Delhi access to global nuclear technology and fuel after nearly three decades, could be operationalised by summer next year.