By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Indian and US negotiators kept looking for a formula to seal their civil nuclear deal Thursday with Vice President Dick Cheney getting into the act to save the day, but did not seem any closer.
Cheney met the high-level Indian delegation led by National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan Thursday afternoon after the two sides took one more crack at the vexed problem stalling the so-called 123 agreement to implement the deal.
The meeting with the vice president came as last-ditch efforts spilled into an extra day with a compromise proving elusive even after an unscheduled meeting Wednesday with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice followed by another with US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley at the White House.
Interventions from Cheney and Rice are reflective of President George Bush's keenness to get the nuclear deal done before he leaves office in January 2009 and score a major foreign policy success on par with Richard Nixon's 1972 opening to China.
White House spokesman Tony Snow put it in so many words as he told reporters Wednesday, "As we've said all along, the civil nuclear agreement is very important to us and we want to see it successfully concluded."
Now going to the wire, the current talks coming after several tortuous rounds of what is euphemistically called "steady progress" are critical in the race to beat the clock with only a small window left to present the final deal to the US Congress for an up or down vote before it goes into another election cycle.
India also needs to sign an additional protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and get the approval of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
After the meeting with Cheney at the White House, Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon goes back to the State department to resume his dialogue with Washington's chief interlocutor, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns.
Earlier, with little indication of how close they were to bridging their differences after three days of marathon talks, Menon and Burns picked up the thread Thursday morning from where they had left it overnight.
However, as the dialogue continued, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters, "I wasn't given the impression that you should look for an announcement today or some kind of definitive conclusion."
"There's good will (between the two sides), we've made progress and we're very hopeful that we can hammer out the remaining differences in the coming days and weeks," he said.
On the table to resolve contentious issues is an out-of-the-box Indian proposal for setting up a fully safeguarded stand-alone dedicated facility for reprocessing US-origin fuel as Washington would neither permit reprocessing nor is it willing to take back the spent fuel.
There is no word on what solutions have been offered by either side to take care of other sticky points like India's insistence on its right to reprocess US nuclear fuel, conduct a test and guarantees for continued supply of fuel for the 14 civil reactors it has agreed to place under international safeguards under a separation plan. Eight other reactors designated military would not be subject to inspections.
Narayanan and Department of Atomic Energy Chairman Anil Kakodkar, whose nod would be important to clinch the deal, are at hand for consultations along with Indian ambassador to US, Ronen Sen, but would not be taking part directly in the formal talks.
Menon is backed at the formal rounds by Deputy Chief of Mission Raminder Singh Jassal, India's High Commissioner to Singapore S. Jaishankar, an expert in nuclear diplomacy and Joint Secretary (Americas) Gaitri Kumar. The Department of Atomic Energy is represented by R.B. Grover.
Burns has Robert Stratford, director of the State Department's Office of Nuclear Security and Cooperation, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher, and Ashley Tellis, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with him.
Rice, who had dropped a string of international engagements to be available for intervention, met the Indian delegation Wednesday morning as hard talks the previous day apparently made little headway in finding solutions to sticky issues holding up the deal that would resume nuclear commerce between them after 30 years.
From the meeting with Rice, Narayanan went into a one-on-one session with Hadley. Rest of the team later joined them and then kept talking business over lunch and after as they had at a dinner hosted by Burns the previous night.
As the talks continued, the State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated Washington's "commitment and desire to reach an agreement.
"And we're sure that the Indian Government wants to reach an agreement. The question is a matter of when and the timing of it. Certainly, there's no time like the present to reach a deal," he said.
Asked if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's reported comment that the negotiations were in the "last leg" indicated that the two sides were ready to seal the deal, he said, "Well, we hope that's, in fact, the case."