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High-level talks set amid US frustration at Indian nuclear deal
By David Millikin
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 04 23 07
Senior US and Indian officials will meet here at the end of the month to "energize" stalled negotiations on a landmark deal to give India access to US nuclear technology, a US spokesman said Friday.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon will be in Washington April 30 and May 1 and will meet with Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to discuss the negotiations, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Earlier, the department mistakenly said Menon would be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday next week.
McCormack said there was "some frustration on the part of the administration as well as Congress on the pace of these negotiations."
"We still have faith that we're going to be able to get this agreement done, but we're at a stage in these particular negotiations where we think we need to raise the level of dialogue to a political level," he said.
"They're going to explore ways that we can energize the discussions so that we can get this done," he said.
The talks concern how to implement an agreement initially reached in July 2005 to India unprecedented access to US nuclear fuel and technology for its civilian power sector without requiring New Delhi to sign a nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty as normally required by US law.
The deal has drawn fire from some US lawmakers and non-proliferation advocates who argue that it undermines efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
But it has been strongly defended by President George W. Bush's administration as the centerpiece of a new relationship with rapidly growing India following decades of Cold War tensions.
The deal has also run into trouble in India, expecially from leftist parties in the governing coalition of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who feel it requires New Delhi to relinquish too much control over nuclear and military matters.
The negotiations have bogged down notably over India's refusal to commit formally to its voluntary unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons testing and its insistence the deal give it the right to reprocess nuclear fuel.
The US law authorizing the deal, passed by Congress late last year, would suspend the nuclear cooperation if India carried out a nuclear test.
McCormack said an experts level meeting to discuss the outstanding differences was held in South Africa earlier this week but failed to make headway, prompting Washington to request the upcoming higher level talks.
While not going into details of the Indian demands, McCormack said they were "suggesting solutions that would require us to change our laws, and we're not going to do that."
Despite the US frustration, McCormack said Washington was not "questioning the Indian government's goodwill and good faith" on the issue and expressed optimism "that these negotiations will ultimately yield an agreement" well before the end of the Bush presidency in January 2008.
The implementing agreement now under negotiation will also have to be approved by Congress, where lawmakers have been angered by recent reports of Indian military cooperation with Iran and charges that India has been trying to illegally obtain secret US weapons technology.
"On the one hand, we have India stealing controlled US missile technology, and on the other hand we have India signing a new defense agreement with Iran," Representative Edward Markey was quoted as saying in The Washington Post on Friday.
"We are a wink and a nod away from US missile technology winding up in Iran's possession, and the Bush administration has either failed to connect these two problems or they just don't care," said the Democratic lawmaker.
McCormack said Washington had "urged the Indian government to take a look at what sort of ties they have with Iran", but that "we're not going to dictate Iranian-Indian relations."
AFP 20 2232 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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