PM Manmohan Singh meets Bush

BERLIN: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday met US President George W Bush on the sidelines of the G-8 Summit in Germany's sea-side resort of Heiligendamm near here.
    
The two leaders had a brief meeting, officials said. It was not immediately clear what transpired in the meeting.
    
The two leaders were expected to touch upon a proposed agreement to operationalise the civil nuclear deal, which has got stuck due to differences on reprocessing issue.
    
As negotiators of the two sides are looking for a political push at the highest level to break the impasse, the meeting between Singh and Bush was expected to give a signal in this regard.
    
Officials of the two countries are holding discussions on ways to move forward to conclude the year-long negotiations on the 123 agreement.
    
A number of new proposals have been made and these are being discussed by the officials.
    
The proposals have come up as part of efforts to veer around the differences, particularly on the reprocessing right, that have prevented any breakthrough in the talks.

Key negotiators of the two countries -- Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns met in New Delhi last week. But they failed to conclude negotiations as differences persisted.

The two countries are aiming at sorting out differences particularly on issues like reprocessing right, perpetuity of fuel supplies and continuance of the civil nuclear cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test.

India has been insisting on having the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and is not ready to accept any legally binding clause in the agreement that could cap its strategic nuclear programme.

Under the US law, Washington will have the right to seek return of material and equipment in the event of India carrying out nuclear tests.

The US contention that Presidential waiver could be a way out of the binding under the American law doesn't find much favour on the Indian side which argues that future Presidents could overturn the waiver.

Both sides have maintained that while some progress has been made at the recent talks, there was still distance to cover.