Top US State Department official Nicholas Burns will head to India this month to try to wrap up a landmark nuclear pact after talks here achieved "extensive progress," a US official said Tuesday.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon held "excellent" and "positive" meetings with senior US officials including Burns and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "We look forward to resolving the outstanding issues in the weeks ahead," he said in a statement.
Burns, the US under secretary of state for political affairs, will travel to India "in the second half of May to reach a final agreement," McCormack said.
"Under Secretary Burns and Foreign Secretary Menon also agreed to continue our work together to bring stability and peace to the region," he added. Menon said after his talks that he was "happy" with the "very productive discussions." Looking forward to Burns' visit, he said: "As far as I'm concerned, this is doable ... and we want to do it as quickly as possible."
Indian embassy spokesman Rahul Chhabra said Menon and Burns discussed "the entire gamut of Indo-US relations, including the civilian nuclear issue." The upbeat US tone signalled a prospective breakthrough for the nuclear deal, which is due to take full effect next year but which has languished since it was struck in July 2005.
The US government had expressed frustration over the pace of the talks to implement the pact, which would give India access to US nuclear energy technology without requiring the Asian country to halt its atomic arms program.
The deal is the centrepiece of energy-hungry India's new relationship with Washington after decades of Cold War tensions, as it tries to sustain its stunning economic expansion. In an opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post, Burns predicted that "within a generation, Americans may view India as one of our two or three most important strategic partners."
Burns said that Washington considers the nuclear deal, which the US Congress approved overwhelmingly in December, as the hallmark of the new warmer relations. "When fully implemented in 2008, this initiative will permit American and international companies to begin peaceful civilian nuclear cooperation with India for the first time in more than a generation," he said.
But differences have persisted, chiefly over a clause which says the United States would withdraw civil nuclear fuel supplies and equipment if India breaches its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.
Menon last week sought to dispel fears from Indian critics who say the agreement will hamper the country's nuclear weapons program, nine years after a round of Indian atomic tests sparked a tit-for-tat response from Pakistan.
"Whatever we do with the US will not affect our nuclear strategic program," he said in a report tabled in the Indian parliament on Thursday. Menon launched two days of talks here on Monday, meeting first with Paula Dobriansky, the US under secretary of state for global affairs and democracy. The State Department described the talks as "productive," and said they covered a range of issues from democratic values to environmental conservation.
Indian experts warn that New Delhi must act fast on the nuclear deal, arguing that with the US presidential elections looming next year the accord could soon drop off the radar screen in Washington.
One likely outcome was a compromise on the agreement's wording, "not a compromise of interests," said G. Balachandran, a visiting fellow at the Indian security think-tank Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Menon said he and Burns on Tuesday also discussed regional issues including the situation in Bangladesh, where a state of emergency rule was imposed three months ago with the an interim government aided by the army.
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