"First up, the decision of what we declare civilian is up to us. It is well-embedded in the agreement. Even so, in the draft agreement, the role of the inspectors is restricted to ensuring that there is no diversion of fuel. There is no obligation for India to share tech. Also, we have a long experience of implementing IAEA safeguards and we know how things work and we can assure that no tech will be shared," Menon said.

What was the sequence of events? When was the text initialed? When was it sent to the IAEA board of governors?

"The text was initialed by Dr Kakodkar on July 7. This does not mean that we went ahead with the agreement without letting the Left parties know. Initialing the text merely means that the two negotiators have agreed to the text in its present form and to made it be known that this is what we have agreed.

On July 8, the Left parties said they are not coming for the final co-ordination meeting on July 10. That is when we sent it to the IAEA," Menon said.

When some journalists said that was before the Left parties withdrew support, Menon said withdrawal of support was never the criteria to send the text to the IAEA. "The co-ordination committee meeting was the deadline, not withdrawal of support. So when the Left decided against coming to the meeting, we sent the text. There is nothing wrong here," he said.

What next?

The text will now go to the IAEA board of governors, which will meet sometime soon. "Once they clear it, it will be placed before the NSG. After the NSG gives us a clean exemption, the text will go to the US Congress where it will be put on an Up-Down vote. These are the tentative sequence of events for the next few steps," Narayanan said.

Image: IAEA Director General Mohammed El Baradei with the chairman of the board of governors Milenko Skoknic at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.
Photograph: Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: India has got the best possible agreement

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