123 countdown

India8217;s special envoy on civilian nuclear cooperation, Shyam Saran, has done well to clear the air in Washington on the next steps towards the implementation of the July 18, 2005 Indo-US agreement. After the US Congress approved, last December, the Hyde Act 8212; which enables the revival of civilian nuclear cooperation between the two countries 8212; a series of mixed signals from New Delhi had tended to sour the mood in Washington. Statements from the Department of Atomic Energy in Mumbai as well as other senior Indian officials in New Delhi generated a renewed sense of crisis about the prospects of Indo-US nuclear cooperation. While the atomic scientists took potshots in public against the Hyde Act, there were hints in New Delhi that the first contracts on future nuclear reactor orders would go to Moscow, in the wake of the Russian President Putin8217;s visit to India. Indo-US nuclear negotiations, it seemed, were back into the familiar mode of one step forward and two steps back.

Saran8217;s task in Washington was two-fold. One to reaffirm India8217;s political will on wrapping up the nuclear negotiations and the other to get a fix on where Washington stood on some of the difficult outstanding issues in the talks on the framework for bilateral nuclear cooperation, also called the 123 agreement. Having come this far, India has no reason to lose momentum in its nuclear diplomacy, despite the perennial nay-sayers within the Indian scientific establishment. It was also quite clear that civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia would materialise only after the US Congress approves the 123 agreement, the international community endorses the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the IAEA finalises an India-specific safeguards agreement.

To be sure, a number of issues with the US remain to be sorted out. These include India8217;s right to reprocess the spent fuel from the safeguarded reactors and the consequences in the event of a future Indian nuclear weapons test. But pragmatists in New Delhi and Washington have always known that complex as these issues might be, they are amenable to mutually satisfactory resolution. As we have seen so often in the past, opponents of the nuclear deal in both countries have repeatedly tried to make the obstacles insurmountable. Saran8217;s visit has hopefully put the realists on both sides back in the driving seat.