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| 123 pact being signed on Oct 10 | | | AGENCIES
NEW DELHI, Oct 8: With US President George W. Bush expected to sign the bill enabling civilian nuclear cooperation with India later tonight, New Delhi and Washington are readying to ink the 123 pact later this week - the final step that will reopen atomic trade between the two countries after a gap of over three decades.
"The 123 pact will be signed Friday afternoon or Saturday morning," a highly placed official source told the media in New Delhi, pleading anonymity. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will formally ink the 123 agreement that will implement the landmark atomic pact accord allowing trade in nuclear reactors, fuel and technologies between the two countries.
Mukherjee, who has played a key role in bringing the nuclear deal to fruition, leaves for Washington Thursday. He returns to India Sunday. Both New Delhi and Washington have, however, yet to make a formal announcement about the signing of the 123 pact.
"Let me just say the agreement will be signed at some point by both sides. I just can't tell you when at this point, but the agreement will be signed," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters in Washington Tuesday.
The 123 pact will overturn the ban imposed on India after it conducted its first nuclear test in Pokhran, described by New Delhi as a "peaceful explosion", in 1974.
The two countries were earlier planning to sign the 123 pact, the sole bilateral document that defines terms of nuclear trade between them, during Rice's day-long visit to India Saturday. However, the pact could not be signed as India insisted that it first wanted Bush to sign a bill to ratify the India-US civil nuclear deal and address some of its concerns on fuel guarantees in his presidential signing statement.
Rice, who was keen to sign the deal during the visit, however, had to put off the much-awaited signing and attributed it to "administrative details" which remained to be sorted out. With Bush signing the bill enabling civilian nuclear cooperation with India in Washington later Wednesday, that hurdle will be removed. Bush's signing statement is expected to address some of India's concerns.
The state department, however, chose to be more circumspect on this sensitive issue of India's concerns.
Asked if India had conveyed to the US that it would sign the nuclear deal once Bush has signed the statement, Wood said: "We're trying to work out, you know, a date whereby a signing can take place. But again, I would just say to you the agreement is done and the agreement will be signed."
During her trip to New Delhi, Rice, a key US interlocutor for the nuclear deal who has relentless championed nuclear entente with India, had emphasised that there are "no open issues" left in the way of the signing of the 123 pact.
The White House has invited lawmakers, prominent members of the Indian American community, and leading businessmen of the two countries besides officials and diplomats, who all played a major role in pushing the deal, for the signing ceremony in the East Room at 2.50 p.m. Wednesday (12.20 a.m. IST Thursday).
The signing of the 123 pact will mark the culmination of over three years of tortuous negotiations aimed at giving India one-time exception from the global rules which forbid nuclear trade with a country which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). |
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