India-Iran ties not to affect N-deal, says Boucher
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec 21: India’s relations with Iran will not feature in a technical agreement Washington and New Delhi are expected to sign soon for implementing their deal for nuclear cooperation, a senior US official said on Thursday.
Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard A Boucher said that the 123 agreement, called so after a section of the US Atomic Energy Act, would be well within the parameters of the July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 joint statements of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The 123 agreement provides guidelines for US nuclear trade with another country and deals with technical details of agreements like the one President Bush signed on Monday.
"In the end, the substance of our cooperation is going to be set in the bilateral agreement that we negotiate and that's a fairly standard agreement. It has to cover certain areas. Relations with third countries are not usually part of that," Mr Boucher said.
Asked if Iran would not be mentioned in the bilateral agreement at all, Mr Boucher said in an interview with Voice of America, "I'll leave that to negotiators, but normally it would not have anything to do with third countries. It would be about the US and the partner country."
However, the legislation President Bush signed this week does refer to India’s relations with Iran and seeks its cooperation in preventing Iran from making a nuclear weapon.
When asked about this reference, Mr Boucher said it was only a reporting requirement for the US administration.
"No one in India should be surprised that the US Congress and the US government care about the India relationship with Iran, particularly when it comes to high technology exports in nuclear matter, military matters,” he said.
"So the fact that our Congress wants them to report, and wants us to report to them, it doesn't impinge on India because it doesn't involve India. And second of all, it's a report that we have to provide to our Congress on an issue that everybody knows we're interested in. So I don't see how that breaks any new ground for anybody in that matter," Mr Boucher added.
Mr Boucher also rejected the claim that the Indo-US nuclear aims to eventually cap India's nuclear weapons programme. "Look at the deal, it doesn't involve the military side,” he said. “It's a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. That's all it affects. So whatever you want to say about it, you can say it does this or doesn't do that, but you can't say that it somehow implicates something because it's very clear on its surface.
"It's a civil nuclear cooperation deal. We think it's a good deal for India and a good deal for the United States, a good deal for really the whole non-proliferation system and for India's relations with the West," he said.
