As complicated as 1, 2, 3

The implementation of the July 18, 2005 agreement involved changing a nearly three-decade-old US law on nuclear proliferation as well as a radical reorganisation of India8217;s atomic energy programme. The huge political and institutional resistance in both nations to the deal only highlights the paradigm-breaking quality of the nuclear agreement.

The difficult internal negotiations in both the countries were often tougher than the bilateral negotiations between India and the US, both large democracies that revel in bitter contestation of policy changes. Yet Manmohan Singh and Bush held firm to the belief that their own respective national interests demanded nuclear revisionism. Their persistence saw the successful resolution of a series of crises in the nuclear negotiations over the last two years.

As we approach what could be a decisive, and hopefully the final, round of negotiations on the 123 agreement, the Indian delegation represents all the key players, including the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, and lends greater weight and credibility to the outcomes in Washington next week.

While the public debate in both the countries has wandered away in all directions, the two delegations no longer have the luxury of putting the primary and secondary issues on the same plane.

The first of the two core issues for India is the right to reprocess. The US needs to recognise that without an unambiguous right to reprocess spent fuel from the reactors, there will be absolutely no support for the nuclear deal in India. After all, India has reprocessed spent fuel for more than four decades, and the plutonium obtained from that activity is critical for the second stage of the Indian nuclear programme built around the breeder reactors.

New Delhi, in turn, needs to understand that there must be credible safeguards arrangements for the civilian reprocessing activity to assure the US and other international partners that this sensitive activity is not susceptible to any military use.

There is nothing in the Hyde Act, which laid out the new law for Indo-US nuclear cooperation last December, that prevents the Bush administration granting India the right to reprocess spent fuel. And the recent Indian offer of building a new plant to reprocess spent fuel under credible safeguards has the merit of addressing American non-proliferation concerns.

A mutually satisfactory understanding on the reprocessing, then, is eminently doable in the Washington talks next week. Similarly, a second Indian concern too is easily fixed. This relates to the creation of a credible framework for ensuring fuel supplies to India in the wake of a future decision by Washington to terminate nuclear cooperation with New Delhi.

President Bush had in fact offered such assurances during his visit to India in March 2006. The trick now lies in converting these assurances into a framework that is fully compatible with the Hyde Act.

As they try to sort out these two important issues, officials need to recognise that they do not have the luxury of an unending negotiation. The US presidential elections are due in November 2008, while India will go to polls by mid-2009. Within the near future, both governments will be 8220;lame duck8221;, and will be drained of political capital.

Time is of essence, then, for both Manmohan Singh and Bush. New Delhi and Washington have taken so long to resolve their differences on implementing the nuclear deal that they have barely addressed the massive international dimension of the July 18 commitments.

This involves the negotiation of the 8220;India-specific8221; safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency which must be approved by its Board of Governors that includes many important countries.

The 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, consisting of all the advanced nations including China, must also approve a modification of its rules to facilitate civilian nuclear cooperation with India.

Some in India have been hoping to exploit the US-Russian differences on nuclear policy. There are others who are paranoid about a potential nuclear nexus between Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin. The reality, however, is that for the first time in decades India8217;s nuclear interests are converging with those of the US and Russia.

Bush and Putin are as enthusiastic as our own atomic scientists on reprocessing spent fuel and burning plutonium for nuclear power generation. Bush and Putin also recognise the importance of assured fuel supplies in the promotion of nuclear power and addressing the new concerns about global warming.

While a campaign in the NSG is no walkover, India is fortunate enough to have support from Moscow, Paris and London for the nuclear deal with the US. Only this combined support from the three big Western powers and Russia can help India overcome potential opposition from China and a few small European countries.

With so much unfinished work at hand on implementing the nuclear deal, it would be a pity if the two bureaucracies let down their political masters next week. Failure to bring the 123 talks to a closure because of an obsession with technical and textual trivia would let the political clock kill the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore