AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
NEW DELHI: Diplomats from India and the United States on Monday will begin negotiating details of a major nuclear cooperation deal, officials said.
The deal would give energy-starved India access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing a majority of its nuclear reactors under international inspection.
The deal was reached in March but the specifics of the plan still have to be hammered out.
“This is the first official negotiation on the bilateral agreement,” US embassy spokesman David Kennedy told AFP.
“There have been a couple of early drafts exchanged back and forth but this is the first time the two negotiating teams are sitting down in formal talks,” Kennedy said.
A team from the US State and Energy departments and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission arrived in New Delhi Sunday for three days of talks, Kennedy said.
This week, both countries will try and work out differences over a provision that bars New Delhi from conducting atomic tests, officials said.
New Delhi has objected to a condition giving the United States the legal right to halt cooperation if India tests a nuclear weapon.
India tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 and has been banned by the United States and other countries from buying fuel for reactors and other related equipment as a result.
Once finalized, the deal will give India access to civilian nuclear technology for the first time in three decades.
The deal also faces hurdles in the US Congress, which must give a greenlight to change the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954. That law prevents the US from trading nuclear technology with nations that are not part of nuclear treaties.
Several US lawmakers have expressed concern over the deal given that India has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The two countries first announced plans to share civilian nuclear technology during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the United States in July 2005 but formalized an agreement in March when US President George W. Bush visited India in March.
According to US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Washington gave New Delhi a draft of the initial agreement in March.
But several experts have warned that forging a civilian nuclear agreement with India would not only make it harder to enforce rules against nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea, but also set a dangerous precedent to other countries with nuclear ambitions.
