Indian and US officials worked to hammer out the contentious details of a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation pact, a deal touted as the cornerstone of an emerging US-India alliance -- but one proving to be anything but.
Both sides had hoped to finalize the deal before US President George W. Bush visits India next week. Instead, problems concluding the agreement are exposing deep differences in how each side perceives India's role in the world's nuclear community.
US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns met for a second day on Friday with his Indian counterpart, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, to discuss the deal, which was signed in July and faces approval by a skeptical US Congress.
Following the talks, India's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "there was greater clarity on the issues under discussion," and that "progress has been made."
Burns told reporters that there were issues the two countries have to resolve and that might take some time. He didn't elaborate.
"The two governments are trying very hard to see our way through to the finish line. The deal hasn't been accomplished yet," he said.
Indian and US officials have in recent days expressed doubts about completing the deal before Bush arrives on Wednesday.
Even Bush appears to have given up on that goal -- he said that he now hopes to finalize the deal while in India.
But once completed, he said the deal would help create an international nuclear community where supplier nations, such as the US, provide nuclear fuel to countries "developing civilian nuclear energy programs," like India.
The supplier nations would then handle the reprocessing of spent fuel, he said in a speech on Wednesday to the Asia Society in Washington. Reprocessing can be used to make weapons-grade nuclear material.
But India has nuclear weapons, and has long been able to reprocess its own spent fuel -- in fact, reprocessing is key to its tightly entwined civilian and military atomic programs. India's nuclear establishment also does not consider the country a developing atomic power, even if its nuclear program is modest in size.
"We have had the ability to reprocess since 1965, but Bush is proposing that our right to do so be taken away," said M.R. Srinivasan, a member of the Indian government's Atomic Energy Commission, which has played a support role in the talks on the nuclear pact.
"That is not acceptable, we are not a `developing' nuclear nation," he said.
The pact marks a major policy shift for the US, which imposed sanctions on India in 1998 after it conducted nuclear tests. The restrictions have since been lifted.
Apart from being hailed as a symbol of the growing ties between India and the US, the deal is also considered to be part of a broader effort by Washington and New Delhi to balance China's growing economic and political influence in Asia.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS