Progress made in Indo-US nuke talks

New Delhi: A day after the Bush Administration indicated its "frustration" over the negotiations, an official on Sunday said that "Some progress" was made at the official level talks between India and the United States in Cape Town on a proposed bilateral agreement to operationalise the civil nuclear deal.

Differences, however, remain and more meetings will be required, the official told PTI in New Delhi after the latest round of talks on the '123 Agreement' that spanned over five days in the South African city on the sidelines of Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) meeting.

"There was forward movement. Some progress was made," the official said without giving details of the talks that concluded on Friday.

The comment came a day after US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that "it is fair to say that there is some frustration on part of the (US) administration as well as the Congress on the pace of these negotiations".

New Delhi points out that negotiation is a process, which is "not complete till it is completed".

The contentious issues in the proposed agreement relate to New Delhi's right over reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and the fallout if India were to conduct an atomic test in future.

India, while noting its declared policy of unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, refuses to make it legally binding by including a clause in the 123 Agreement.

New Delhi insists that civil nuclear cooperation should not be affected if India were to conduct a nuclear test and should be treated at par with other nuclear weapon countries in this regard.

McCormack said, "Indian government has raised a series of issues in these negotiations concerning our laws and suggested solution that would require us to change our laws."

"And we are not going to do that. We can't do that," he added.

While the US delegation was led by Richard Stratford, Director in the Nuclear Division of the State Department, S Jai Shanker, High Commissioner to Singapore, who has been involved in the parleys over the civil nuclear deal, led the Indian side.

Jaishanker also met officials of some NSG countries and briefed them about the deal as part of efforts to win the backing of the 45-nation grouping.

The process will be carried forward at a higher level when Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon travels to Washington later this month to hold talks with the US Under Secretary Nicholas Burns.