NEW DELHI, June 2: High-level talks on a controversial civilian nuclear deal between India and the United States appeared to have hit the doldrums on Saturday with both sides looking at the forbidding choice — for Delhi to forgo its sovereign right to conduct future tests or for Washington to cancel a law that effectively denies India the right to carry out another test.
Informed sources said that the inconclusive three-day talks, led by Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, would now be kicked upstairs to be dealt with politically.
The first opportunity for this would be the G-8 summit in Germany next week where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to meet US President George Bush.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to be planning a visit to New Delhi, possibly in July or August, by which time the monsoon session of parliament would have already set the direction for the nuclear deal. The assault on the deal has come from the opposition as well as the government’s leftist allies.
Indian officials said the talks should now be best pursued quietly and without the media getting too involved for everybody’s comfort. They admitted to lingering differences between the two sides but reserved comment on what precisely or how serious these were.
The US embassy was slightly more expansive. In a statement, after a proposed joint press conference did not materialise, it said that Mr Burns’s visit was meant to hold meetings with the Indian government and `olitical leaders to review the new global partnership the United States and India have established across a broad range of areas’.
Mr Burns therefore had productive meetings with Prime Minister Singh, foreign minister and other senior officials.
