India and the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday concluded the fifth round of talks on the India-specific safeguards agreement, which is crucial for the India-United States civil nuclear agreement. The consultations, which began on Monday, were to have concluded on Wednesday but were extended by a day, IAEA sources said in Vienna today.
There was no official word from either side on the outcome of the talks. India and the IAEA are engaged in preparing an agreed text for India-specific safeguards.
Indian negotiators Dr Ravi B Grover, Director, Strategic Planning of the Department of Atomic Energy, and India's Ambassador to Austria Saurabh Kumar were not available for comments on the current negotiations.
It is not immediately clear whether this was the final round of talks or more discussions were required for finalising the template on safeguards specifically for India, a key requirement before the Indo-US deal is operationalised.
The US continues to prod India to conclude the nuclear deal at the earliest but New Delhi maintains that negotiations will take their own time. Articulating India's position, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters in Delhi today that India was "not looking at a deadline".
Menon said the government was trying and hoping to wrap up the agreement with the IAEA as soon as possible. Earlier, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar had said that while India had to get the agreement with the IAEA finalised at the earliest, it has to be correctly done and it has to meet all the requirements.
"There are several steps involved. We have to move step by step," he had said.
According to M R Srinivasan, member of the Atomic Energy Commission, the India- specific agreement is special. Once the draft is ready, it would come to the Commission for examination and then go to the United Progressive Alliance-Left political committee for approval.
New Delhi is working on a new template, which would be more of facility-specific safeguards and take into consideration Indian interest on uninterrupted nuclear fuel supply and stockpiling of fuel, as outlined in the bilateral 123 Agreement between India and the US.
After the agreed text is ready, the next step is to get a waiver from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group to allow India to participate in global nuclear commerce. India has sought a clean and unconditional waiver from the 45-member group that controls the global nuclear trade.
The next NSG plenary meeting is scheduled for May but the group could meet in a special session to consider the Indian exemption issue before that, the sources said.
NSG had considered the draft US-India agreement (123 agreement) for civil nuclear cooperation, which was presented to the group by the US in September last and January 2008. Once the IAEA agreed text and the draft on waiver for India by NSG are ready, they have to be approved by the US Congress.