June 06, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 20, 1428

NEW DELHI, June 5: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet US President George W. Bush during a four-day visit to Germany for the G-8 meeting starting this week. They will discuss, among other issues, the stalled civil nuclear deal, it was officially announced here on Tuesday. Dr Singh will also meet Chinese President Hu Jintao and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, among other leaders.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters that the Indo-US nuclear deal would figure at the talks, but there would not be any negotiations on the issue. “I don't think we expect to discuss the nuclear issue” as it would be a ‘pull-aside’ meeting and not a formal bilateral discussion, he said. “It would be mentioned in the meeting” as it was a very important part of the Indo-US relations.

United News of India quoted official sources as saying the two leaders were expected to ask their sides involved in the negotiations to speed up the process of finalising the 123 agreement, necessary for the implementation of the nuclear deal.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the US laws had come in the way of an outcome at the talks visiting US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns had with Mr Menon and others last week.

Dr Singh would attend a meeting of leaders of the outreach nations -- China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, besides India -- at Berlin on June 7 to discuss trade and development issues, including the Doha round of the WTO talks.

Mr Menon said India welcomed President Bush's proposal to have meetings at Washington later this year with the leaders of India, China and other fast developing economies to discuss the climate issue, the main theme of the G8 summit.

India was ''comfortable'' with many of the issues Mr Bush proposed to raise at the meetings, including energy security and transfer of clean energy technology.

“We are ready to talk (on climate change) anywhere, any time” as India would judge the process on the basis of substance and on what the country was ready to agree.

Mr Menon, however, said any decision on arresting global warming should be done under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCC) as was in the case of the Kyoto Protocol, which had left out India and China while setting emission reduction targets for industrialised nations, UNI said.