WASHINGTON, Feb 12: Negotiations over a nuclear deal between the US and India have entered a sensitive stage where both sides are struggling to decide how to separate civilian and military nuclear facilities.

Diplomatic sources in Washington told Dawn that both sides are now trying to elaborate certain terms of the July 18 nuclear accord that deal with the separation of military and civilian facilities. The deal was signed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the White House in July but has since then run into trouble.

According to sources, the Indians feel that some of the propositions in the accord could impose constraints on India’s unhindered development of its nuclear capabilities, particularly hedging its weapon development programme.

Both US and Indian experts are finding it difficult to separate military nuclear installations from civilian facilities because the Indian programme combines nuclear power generation with weapon development.

The Indians claim that their weapon option is a product of their nuclear power programme, arguing that the weapon-grade plutonium pool, from which India’s weapon stock-pile has been built, emanates from spent fuel from a research reactor built by Indian nuclear scientists on way to developing Indian nuclear power capacity.

In December, India gave the US a list of civilian nuclear facilities it is willing to put under safeguards. But in January, Washington said the list was too short and that India’s fast breeder reactors must also be put under safeguards.

The chief of India’s Department of Atomic Energy, Anil Kakodar, however, has publicly advised New Delhi not to put the fast breeder reactors under international monitors because it will ‘shackle’ his scientists and leave the country dependent on imported uranium.

“The Indian nuclear establishment is not comfortable with the civil nuclear energy deal because it changes things for them,” said Dennis Kux, a former US diplomat. “The separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities poses a big problem for them. They are worried and nervous because it asks them to change their set pattern of working, which they have been used to for the last three decades,” he said.