India, US believe N-deal can be completed soon

By less than a month after senior Bush administration officials, most notably Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns -- the chief interlocutor of the US-India civilian nuclear agreement -- have publicly expressed 'frustration' and accused India of dragging its feet on the bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation accord, known as the 123 Agreement, both sides expressed renewed optimism that the deal can be completed soon, but refused to provide a time line.

Following marathon talks between visiting Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and Burns, which began informally Monday evening when the latter hosted Menon and his delegation, including S Jaishankar, currently Indian Ambassador to Singapore, for dinner at the Watergate Hotel, and continued at the State Department Tuesday for more than four hours, the Administration said, "The discussions were positive and the US is encouraged by the extensive progress that was made on the issues."

"We look forward to resolving the outstanding issues in the weeks ahead," the State Department said in a statement, and added, "In that regard, Under ecretary Burns will visit India in the second half of May to reach a final agreement."

Menon, who also paid a courtesy call on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following the working luncheon with Burns and before the resumed a second round of talks, echoing the State Department's sentiments, said, "On 123, we think we made considerable progress forward and we now expect to welcome Under Secretary Burns to India later this month -- the second-half of this month -- and we hope to finalise this as soon as we can."

But at a press conference at the Indian embassy after his discussions with Burns, despite repeated attempts where reporters came at him from different angles asking the same question as to whether the contentious issues that had stalled the 123 Agreement, particularly the reprocessing issue -- where India has sserted that its right to reprocess spent fuel is non-negotiable -- had been resolved, Menon declined to provide any details nor a time frame in terms of whether the Agreement would be completed this time around during Burns' visit later this month.

He said he had struck a deal with Burns that 'we are not going to get into the issues until we've solved them all'.

""When we have an agreement, we'll tell you all about it -- and I am not going to get into individual issues at this stage," he said, and added, "Frankly, there is no point because there is no point trying to negotiate issues -- no matter how close we are or even if we've solved them -- through the media."

Menon would only reiterate that "I think we are both confident that we can do this and we both want to do it very quickly -- the quicker the better."

When informed of the concern in industry and among other quarters of the pro-India lobby that went to bat for the deal in the US Congress, including the Indian American community, that had all been discreetly seized by the Administration expressing its frustration to them and with repeated comments by the likes of Burns and several other officials that 'the ball is now in India's court', Menon repeated, 'I think it's doable and I am sure we can do this'.

He told rediff.com, "As I said, we made considerable progress", but acknowledged, "we still have issues, still to settle, and until we settle them all, I'd rather not get into saying which ones, how much, where…But I think it's doable -- we'd like to do it as soon as possible."

When asked to explain, how within the space of two weeks the discussions had moved from a phase of "frustration", to "finalising as soon as we can", Menon, replied, "I think you should ask the people who were frustrated. I don't think I ever said that."

Earlier, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that Menon had come for the talks "with some constructive ideas," but noted, "that doesn't mean that we are going to be able to move this as quickly as we had hoped -- we'll see -- as a result of these meetings."

"But we are confident in the long run that we will get this deal done," he said.

Asked if Rice had any special message for the government of India as far as the nuclear deal is concerned, McCormack said, "Only that we're committed to working in good faith to get an agreement, that we're confident to work in good faith to get an agreement, that we will get one done and that it's going to require some creativity and some compromise on both sides in order to get an agreement done if we're going to be able to move this as quickly as we would have hoped."

The spokesman said, "We're at a point now where we're going to see whether or not the agreement can be moved forward quickly or not."

But Menon at the briefing at the embassy denied that India had made any compromises and asserted that the issue was not one of compromise but to evolve and agreement by both sides which is in conformity with the July 18, 2005 and the March 3, 2006 Joint India-US statements.