India-US Nuclear Talks make No major Headway     
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

NEW DELHI (India): The recent talks between the United States and India here on “123 agreement” to facilitate nuclear deal between both the countries have not made any significant headway.

The Asian Age quoting sources reported on Wednesday “the basic push to go through with the deal has to come from the top in both New Delhi and Washington.

Officials can work on the language, but it is clear that the Bush administration cannot move away from the Hyde Act to incorporate Indian concerns at this stage,” the sources said.

The Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has told the government that it would not endorse an agreement which would prevent India to “reprocess spent fuel, stockpile nuclear fuel and recognise its right to nuclear testing.”

The Indian Department of Atomic Energy Chief has taken a stand “if the US did not concede the Indian demands, the agreement could be dropped as India has other options.” Only the nuclear business community, which was “aggressively pushing for the deal”, would be affected, he said.

Dr. Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary, DAE, has said in a recent interview to a newsmagazine: “We do not want to convert this (unilateral, voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests) into a bilateral agreement.”

He said the moratorium on nuclear testing was unilateral and voluntary while the US wants to make this binding through the bilateral agreement.●