N-Deal: ‘BJP was ready to settle for much less’

“I think half of what the Clinton administration has been prepared to offer the BJP-led government that we were dealing with, the deal that President Bush was willing to make with Manmohan Singh and company, the Indian side then would have gone for it,” said Talbott, known in India for the two-year marathon talks with the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.

The famed 14 rounds of talks, that took place in seven countries spanning four continents, were instrumental in putting back on rails the Indo-US ties strained due to India’s series of nuclear tests in May 1998.

BJP hit back at Talbott saying that the NDA government had not held any discussions with him on the nuclear issue.

“I am surprised by his statement because during the last two years of NDA government, he was no more the US Deputy Secretary of State. We had no discussions on the lines of the current nuclear deal and the 123 Agreement,” senior BJP leader and former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said.

Sinha said the NDA government ‘never pushed’ for anything related to the current Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation.

“Our deliberations with the US government only focused Next Steps of Strategic Partnership (NSSP),” Sinha said.

“Our position has always been that our relations with the US will always remain cordial even if the nuclear deal falls through,” he said.

“In our time, as all the evidence will show, we were discussing peripheral issues like safety of nuclear plants etc. There was no draft of the kind like the 123 Agreement of the present government,” the former minister said.

“We were not negotiating a deal of the kind which has been negotiated by the UPA government,” Sinha said.