Senior US and Indian officials met the International Atomic Energy Agency chief on Friday ahead of an Indian briefing to IAEA governors to resolve questions about India's plan for expanded nuclear inspections. India negotiated the safeguards scheme with IAEA experts and the text is to be considered by the UN watchdog's 35-nation governing board in a special August 1 session.
Approval is a precondition for launching a US-Indian nuclear trade accord. If it passes, India and the United States must win clearance from a 45-nation group that regulates sensitive nuclear trade, then ratification by the US Congress for the controversial 2005 nuclear agreement to take force. India agreed to subject its 14 declared civilian atomic reactors to inspections to help enable it to import "trigger list" nuclear items for peaceful use, even though it has shunned the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and tested atomic bombs.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon consulted with IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday hours before an afternoon briefing with agency governors as well as delegates from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). ElBaradei then received US Under-secretary of State William Burns for talks on India. Burns was making a brief stopover in Vienna en route to Geneva where he will join talks with Iran on its disputed atomic work in an unprecedented step by Washington.
Menon, Burns and ElBaradei had no comment for reporters. ElBaradei has endorsed the US-Indian deal as a boost for non-proliferation and peaceful use of relatively clean nuclear energy in the developing world. IAEA lawyers have vetted the India inspections draft as consistent with safeguards standards. But India is lobbying hard to defuse concerns about parts of the safeguards text seen as possible loopholes, and possible resistance in the NSG to awarding an unconditional waiver for trade with one of just three non-NPT countries in the world.
Diplomats wanted India to clarify language in the safeguards draft hinting inspections were not necessarily permanent, and possibly blurring what are now supposed to be clear divisions between New Delhi's civilian and military nuclear sectors. Before the August 1 meeting, however, India's government faces a tight no-confidence vote. If the government loses next Tuesday, early elections will be called and the entire nuclear initiative could disintegrate.