By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : As senior Indian and US officials continued hard negotiations to untangle the knots in their civil nuclear pact conceived this day two years ago, Washington expressed optimism that "we can get a deal".
"…It's really just trying to make a push to get this agreement over the finish line," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack as a "serious, high-level delegation" from India went into the first formal round Tuesday to resolve a "couple of tough issues" in the implementing 123 agreement.
The Indian side would not say anything beyond "the talks are continuing" as the full complement of Indian delegation, including National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan Department of Atomic Energy Chairman Anil Kakodkar and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon kept the talks on at a dinner hosted by Washington's key negotiator R. Nicholas Burns.
The clincher is expected to come when Narayanan meets with US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley at the White House Wednesday – the second anniversary of the July 18, 2005 joint statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush.
Earlier Menon led a formal round of discussions with the US team led by Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs. 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 were part of the Indian team.
The Department of Atomic Energy, whose nod would be important to seal the deal, was represented by R.B. Grover.
As the talks began at the State Department Tuesday, McCormack told reporters, "…We're going to take stock of where we are in negotiating the so-called 123 agreement. …There are a couple tough issues that we have left to resolve. We believe that we can get a deal; we can get an agreement."
"I think it really comes down to a matter of timing; when is that going to get done? This meeting will provide us a good indicator as to the answer to that question: When can we get that deal done?" he added.
Asked how Washington expected to resolve their long-standing differences on India's insistence on its right to conduct nuclear tests and reprocess US supplied nuclear fuel, McCormack said, " We'll see. We'll see in the coming – coming hours and over the next couple of days."
"…We'll see if we're able to bridge the differences. Certainly there is a willingness on our part to work in a constructive manner to get a deal done, and I suspect that you would hear the same thing from our Indian partners, but you can ask them where they stand," he said.
Apart from an insistence on reprocessing and test rights, New Delhi is seeking 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.
India swears by the July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 joint statements and considers such restrictions placed by the Henry Hyde act passed by the US Congress last December to approve the deal in principle as beyond their pail.
US side, on the other hand has been pleading its unwillingness or inability to sidestep the Hyde Act as making any changes in the law now is considered an uphill task with the Democratic controlled Congress at loggerheads with President Bush though the India deal has broad bipartisan support.
To break the impasse, the Indian side has come up with an out-of-the-box proposal for setting up a fully safeguarded stand-alone dedicated facility for reprocessing US-origin fuel alone as Washington would neither permit reprocessing nor is it willing to take back the spent fuel.
The US Congress has to again approve the final 123 agreement in an up or down vote before the nuclear deal is implemented. 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.
The ongoing round of talks is considered critical as there is only a small window left to present the final deal to Congress before it goes into another election cycle and President Bush leaves office in January 2009.