India, US make progress on 123 agreement
India, US make progress on 123 agreement
By PTI
Washington: India and the US reported “extensive progress" in the talks over the bilateral pact to operationalise the civil nuclear deal and decided to hold another round of discussions later this month to finalise the accord.
After their talks, foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon and US under secretary Nicholas Burns said both sides are determined to resolve the differences that remain and firm up the agreement as soon as possible.
“On the 123 agreement, we have made considerable progress forward and we now expect to welcome Burns to India later this month. We hope to finalise this as soon as we can," Menon said at the Indian Embassy last evening.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the “discussions are positive and the US is encouraged by the extensive progress that was made on the issues. We look forward to resolve the outstanding issues in the weeks ahead".
“In this regard, Burns will visit India in the second half of May to reach a final agreement," he said. Asked to comment on some of the things that the US is said to be insistent upon such as testing and reprocessing, Menon said, “We are not going to get into the issues until we have solved them all.When we have an agreement we will tell you all about it.I am not going to get into individual issues at this stage. Frankly there is no point in trying to negotiate issues through the media."
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