New Delhi: With major differences persisting on lifetime fuel guarantees for safeguarded reactors, the reprocessing of spent fuel and a reference to a future Indian nuclear test as a condition for the United States to cut off nuclear cooperation, India has drafted its own 14-clause version of the crucial bilateral nuclear agreement with the U.S. which will be handed over to American officials in Washington next Monday by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.

The draft peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement — known as the `123 agreement' after the numbered clause of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act from which it is derived — has emerged as the latest battleground over the terms and conditions under which the July 2005 India-U.S. nuclear agreement will be implemented.

Responding to criticisms about certain provisions of the Henry Hyde Act passed last December by the U.S. Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament that the Indian Government would be bound only by the bilateral agreement it signed with the U.S. and not by domestic American laws authorising nuclear commerce with India. He acknowledged that there were areas which "cause us concern," but said clarifications had been sought from the United States.

With negotiations over the bilateral agreement now slipping into high gear, however, the Indian side is finding its American interlocutors less than forthcoming.

Saran's visit

Highly placed sources told The Hindu that the visit the Prime Minister's special envoy, Shyam Saran, paid to Washington in January did not yield the expected clarifications and that major conceptual differences remained.

One official wryly noted that all the U.S. side has been prepared to grant so far is the correction of a typo in the Hyde Act. In the definitions section as passed, a nuclear detonation was defined in terms of the equivalent energy released by "one point of TNT." On India's insistence, this was corrected subsequently to "one pound". But other Indian queries on more substantive issues have drawn a stony silence.

Providing an account of the talks held so far on the 123 agreement, the sources said the first U.S. draft was handed over to India in March 2006. India provided its response in July, following which another U.S. draft was handed over in August. India then suggested that the negotiations be put on hold till the U.S. Congress actually enacted the proposed waiver legislation placed before it. But on American insistence, a discussion on "concepts" rather than "clauses" was held last November.

Once the Indian draft is handed over and U.S. officials have had time to study it, a team of American negotiators will travel to Delhi to take the process forward some time in the next two months.

With the Hyde Act full of provisions running counter to the letter and spirit of the July 2005 agreement, the Indian Government sought and obtained a statement by President George W. Bush on December 19 that he would not be bound by some of the law's provisions. Notwithstanding this assurance, U.S. officials are now insisting that the 123 agreement cannot deviate from the language prescribed as far as prohibiting any nuclear detonation by India is concerned. Nor are they prepared to provide India fuel guarantees over and above reactor "operating requirements" as specified by the Obama amendment in the Hyde Act.

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