India and the US on Thursday held high-level talks on a proposed agreement to operationalise the civilian nuclear deal with Washington saying that the two sides were almost there and little more work was needed to conclude the pact.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon met US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to iron out remaining differences on the '123 Agreement,' which has already witnessed '90 per cent progress.'
Before going in for talks, Burns told media persons that the two countries had come a long way in the talks on the agreement since the negotiations began two years ago.
Burns said the two sides are almost there and little more work was needed to conclude the pact.
He expressed confidence that the agreement would be clinched.
Washington has said that both countries are 'well on the way' to conclude the pact and that it did not believe any of the remaining differences were 'insurmountable.'
The two sides will seek to wind up the year-long negotiations ahead of the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W Bush in Germany next week on the sidelines of the G-8 Summit.
Deputy Spokesman of the State Department Tom Casey had on Wednesday said in Washington that the deal was beneficial to both the countries and it will strengthen nonproliferation regimes.
"Certainly, we believe that such a deal is in the interests of both countries. We want to see this move forward," Casey said at his regular briefing.
"We have talked about the civil nuclear arrangement for a number of months now. But it is something that we believe is beneficial to both nations. It represents a new level of cooperation between our countries. And we also think it represents a strengthening of nonproliferation regimes.
"It certainly is something that has been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as something they think will be helpful and beneficial and will provide greater surety to the world," he added.
The deputy spokesman parried a question on the kind of details that still needed to be 'hashed out' saying that this is an area he would like to leave it to the negotiators of the two sides.
"Obviously, they have been talking about this for a while. There are some differences that remain. But we are looking forward to being able to work those out. We certainly do not think any of them are insurmountable," he said.
"As we have said in the past, we need to make sure that this arrangement does conform with the relevant US legislation that this is under, so there are limits to the kind of flexibility we can have. But the Indian government understands that. And I think we are well on our way toward an agreement.
"I am not trying to predict anything will come out of this particular trip, but we are making progress. And we look forward to eventually concluding the deal," Casey said.
The key negotiators of the two sides will aim at resolving differences on aspects like reprocessing right and continuity of civil nuclear cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test in future.
