By IANS
New Delhi : US ambassador David Mulford Wednesday met Prime Minister’s special envoy Shyam Saran and told him about the US plan to call a special meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to discuss the issue.
The NSG is expected to meet in Vienna Thursday, on the sidelines of the IAEA meeting.
Mulford also underlined the need for India to conclude negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urgently so that it can be taken up by the NSG for a rule change and endorsement by the US Congress well in time before Washington is swamped by election fever, an informed source said.
Mulford and Saran, one of India’s key interlocutors on the nuclear deal who has been visiting NSG countries to mobilise support for it, also discussed various aspects of the nuclear agreement that is tipped to end India’s decades-old isolation from the international nuclear commerce.
Mulford goes to the US Wednesday night to brief the Bush administration on the political climate in India, specially the opposition of the Left parties to the deal that may jeopardise the future of this path-breaking agreement.
Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar is in Vienna to attend a meeting of IAEA, of which India is a member. He has remained silent on the issue of opening safeguards negotiations with the UN nuclear watchdog.
In a speech to the fourth India-US Economic Summit Tuesday, the US envoy asked India to take the “last steps” so that the deal was endorsed by the US Congress during the tenure of the Bush administration.
“Now we must take the final steps. Time is of the essence,” Mulford said.
“This involves India completing the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and the rule change by the NSG which will permit this initiative to be global in scope,” he said.
“We know there is a political process. We are patiently observing it and looking forward to finishing the process,” he said when asked what he thought of communist leader Prakash Karat asking the government to put the deal on hold for six months.