Indo-US N-talks on Thursday, Washington for early conclusion

NEW DELHI: India and the US will hold high level talks here on Thursday on a proposed agreement to operationalise the civil nuclear deal amid keen interest on both sides to conclude the pact as soon as possible.

With 90 per cent progress already reported on the talks on '123 Agreement', US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns will be here for three days to hold talks with Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to sort out the remaining differences.

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.

On the eve of the talks between Menon and Burns, US Ambassador David C Mulford said on Wednesday that 'considerable work' was to be done on a "very technical and detailed agreement".

"We want to finish as soon as we can and both sides are positive we can do this," the Ambassador 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.

The meeting between Menon and Burns was earlier expected to take place last week but was postponed as the US had sought some technical clarifications on a draft text presented by India, sources said.

The clarifications were provided by India at a two-day expert-level meeting in London from May 21 after which the two sides reported "further progress" towards finalisation of the mutually-agreed text of the agreement.