The Indo-US nuclear deal  has now been finalised. It had been stalled when Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and his US counterpart, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the State Department Nicholas Burns had met here in May.

A former Indian ambassador said the two sides in their extended negotiations in Washington over the last four days had found a “via media” to resolve the dispute over these contentious issues which include India’s demand for the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, demand for building nuclear fuel reserves for life-time of the safeguarded nuclear reactors and the nature of safeguard arrangement with the IAEA.

In view of the complexity of the issues involved,  the Indian negotiating team to Washington included Atomic Energy Commission chairman Dr Anil Kakodkar. The Narayan-led team had meetings with US Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mr Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
Though officials involved in the negotiations were not willing to go into details of the agreed draft as regards the resolution of the contentious issues, former director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Dr A N Prasad reckoned that the US side might have conceded the Indian demand for reprocessing rights.

After all, India had developed the technology for reprocessing almost four decades ago, ahead of countries like Germany, China and Japan; India was not asking for reprocessing technology, he said.  An Indian-established dedicated reprocessing facility, which India has offered to set up, might have been accepted by the US as this was not contrary to the spirit of the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress, he said. 

But Dr Prasad thought that the agreed formulation on India’s demand for stockpiling nuclear fuel for the lifetime of the safe guarded reactors might not have been accepted by the US side.

The draft could have given “assurances of supply but not right to physical stockpiling of nuclear fuel, he felt.
If the Indian side had accepted the “fallback safeguard” provision contained in the Hyde Act, then the scientists would not be very comfortable with that, Dr Prasad said, adding that this would enable the US national inspectors access to the Indian nuclear facilities as opposed to inspection by IAEA inspectors, he said.