On G8 margins, India and US stay committed to 123 pact

BERLIN: India and the US are committed to see the 123 pact through to resume nuclear commerce between the two nations despite some irritants at the moment, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said here Friday after a brief chat between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush.

"We think it is doable," Menon said, after the two leaders had an informal "pull aside" meeting for around 10 minutes on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligandamm, some 250 km northeast from here.

"What we both are doing right now is reviewing where we are. They are doing the same process and we are doing the same process. We are both committed to seeing this through," he said after the meeting.

The foreign secretary said Indian National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan also met his US counterpart Stephen Hadley in Heiligendamm on Friday as New Delhi and Washington tried to remove the hurdles that were holding up the path-breaking agreement.

The meetings came after the previous talks over three days earlier this month in New Delhi between Nicholas Burns, Washington's chief interlocutor on the nuclear deal, and the Indian side led by the foreign secretary, made little progress.

Menon did not go into specifics of what was discussed between Manmohan Singh and Bush but confirmed that the issue of the nuclear deal did come up at their meeting. "It was mentioned," he said, declining to be drawn any further on the matter.

"This was not a forum for negotiations," Menon said. The meeting, nevertheless, started with the prime minister inquiring about Bush's health - he had an upset stomach Friday morning - and went on to discuss a wide range of issues, he added.

The 123 agreement, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, is aimed at enabling resumption of nuclear commerce with India after a 30-year gap, but some issues are holding up a convergence between the two sides.

Officials said India wants to preserve its strategic autonomy and was unwilling to go beyond a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing, while the US wanted to terminate the civil nuclear cooperation should India conduct a nuclear test.

India is also demanding the right to be given prior approval for reprocessing of US-origin spent fuel to run its fast-breeder programme, which Washington is not yet ready to accede to, saying the issue will arise at a much later date.

Officials said India was also ready with a new proposal for a dedicated facility to safeguard the spent nuclear fuel, in seeking to give a new push to its talks with the US on the 123 pact.

Under the proposal, the facility will exclusively safeguard reprocessed atomic fuel, which is one of the key areas holding up the 123 pact. The facility, they said, could be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring.

The Manmohan Singh-Bush meeting followed a statement by the G8, which said while it was aware of the steps India was taking for non-proliferation, it also wanted New Delhi to take a more forthcoming approach to address its energy needs.

"We look forward to reinforcing our partnership with India," the G8, comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US, said in what it called the Heiligendamm Statement on Non-proliferation.

"We note the commitments India has made and encourage India to take further steps towards integration into the mainstream of strengthening the non-proliferation regime," said the statement adopted at the G8 Summit.

This, it added, would facilitate a more forthcoming approach from India towards nuclear cooperation to address its energy requirements in a manner that enhances and reinforces the global non-proliferation regime.

The G8 leaders also noted with concern the continuing threat of nuclear terror and said they were committed to broaden participation and further develop the global initiative in this area launched last year.

India, along with four other countries - Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa - attended the outreach summit of the G8 Friday.

Manmohan Singh's intervention on climate change, during which he emphasised on common but differentiated responsibilities among rich and developing nations, set the agenda for the deliberations, officials said.

The prime minister also had brief interactions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and newly-elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, before he called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the host of the G8, to end his engagements here.

Earlier, the five outreach countries presented a joint position paper on issues like global governance, terrorism, international trade, cross-border migration, climate change, energy security and South-South cooperation.

The heads of state or government of G8 countries and the outreach partners also released a joint statement that pledged to cooperate in areas like promotion of research, cross-border investment, climate change, energy security and Africa's uplift.