India-US nuke deal to see light of day in mid-2016

'One thing I've learned about nuclear power is that these are not fast kind of time-lines.'

Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.

United States Ambassador to India Richard Rahul Verma is confident that the US-India civilian nuclear deal that has remained in limbo seven years after it was enacted vis-a-vis its implementation, will finally see the light of the day come mid-2016.

Verma, who was in Washington, DC for Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's visit and then stayed over for a couple of days for consultations at the State Department, told a select group of journalists that "I actually think in the first six months of 2016, you'll see a lot of activity."

"The contact group has continued to meet and just met the week of Thanksgiving in Washington," Verma said, "We've had really positive discussions with the nuclear arm of the Indian government, really over the last few months. I was in Mumbai and I've had discussions too."

Verma, who on December 11 delivered a major retrospective of US-India Relations in 2015 at The Brookings Institution, reiterated, "We are working hard on the implementation," and acknowledged, "It's not enough to just say we've reached an understanding in liability-- implementation is key."

During his interaction with the media, when asked if he was at liberty to discuss some of the specifics that can be expected with regard to the agreement's implementation, the envoy said, "Not by company specifically, but I would just say we really have had good discussions with the Department of Atomic Energy, NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited), and the Prime Minister's Office, and everyone wants to see us move toward implementation."

"And, remember, there were some things that were still outstanding on the Indian side," he noted, "and one of them was the ratification of The Convention on Supplementary Compensation and one was making sure the insurance pool was up and running."

"There was a patchwork of things that had to occur," Verma argued, "and which frankly, have occurred or will occur shortly. So, that's why I am actually confident we are going to be moving more aggressively to toward implementation in 2016."

When Rediff.com pressed him on the time-line for implementation of the deal, since he was putting himself on a limb expressing confidence that it would happen definitely in mid-2016 and informed him that there was much bitterness among the US protagonists and key negotiators like R Nicholas Burns and others, including in the US Congress who had gone to bat for the agreement, taking on the non-proliferation lobby who perceived New Delhi's inaction as almost a betrayal, Verma said, "One thing I've learned about nuclear power is that these are not fast kind of time-lines."

While acknowledging that the deal was a game-changer in the US-India strategic partnership and its non-implementation was a nagging hangover in the otherwise galloping US-India relations, Verma explained, "The notion of building a reactor for the first time in a country you've never built a nuclear reactor in, is not a short-term process. And, that's not an excuse, that's just a reality. So it's a multi-year reality."

"Secondly," he explained, "we were stuck of the 2010 liability law for five years -- stuck. So, we weren't able to make progress. But now, you have to look at where we are today and this is where the government-to-government commitments, the understandings, now have to be reflected in commercial contracts."

However, Verma said, "I am not predicting that in 2016, we are going to turn a key and there will be nuclear power generated. What I am suggesting is that the path towards commercial contracts and actual development will continue apace."

"So, again, it's going to be up to each company, and it's not just the two big companies (Westinghouse and General Electric) we always talk about -- there's a lot of smaller companies that are also involved in the supply chain, in development, that will also be part of the equation."

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IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama at their Chai Ka Charcha in New Delhi on January 25, 2015, which cleared the way for the operationalisation of the India-US nuclear deal.