NSA in London for key Iran meeting as Govt welcomes diplomacy, says focus on A Q Khan

While there is no official word, sources said Narayanan is carrying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s brief that New Delhi is all for consensus but its stance on November 24 depends on the wording of the resolution moved in the IAEA.

That assumes great significance given New Delhi’s welcome today of the IAEA’s latest report in which the nuclear watchdog got access to documents from Iran.

These documents not only give details of the technology that Iran was offered by the A Q Khan black-market network but also diagrams, which The New York Times reported, on how to form uranium into “hemispherical spheres, a description that could suggest the basic steps toward creating bomb cores.”

Welcoming the IAEA report in which Iran has been described as “more forthcoming,” an External Affairs Ministry spokesman said that the progress was a “vindication” of Delhi’s stand (on Sept 24) advocating that more time be given to “enable us to reach a satisfactory resolution of outstanding issues.”

But Delhi made it clear that the agency should also focus on “clandestine activities of foreign intermediaries, in particular the Pakistan-based A Q Khan network’’ as they impact on India’s national security concerns. “We believe that the principled position that we have taken on focusing the sources as well as the recipients of the clandestine proliferation has contributed to this development,’’ the spokesman said.