PM-Bush meet nearly wrecked by viral saboteur

JYOTI MALHOTRA

Berlin, June 8, 2007 : The enormous fragility of the Indo-US deal was driven home to Indian officials at the Heilingendamm resort this morning, when a viral saboteur kept the US president George Bush longer in bed than usual and nearly wrecked an already too-short scheduled encounter between him and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But Bush had soon grappled with the stomach fever, and rose from bed to meet the PM for a ``few minutes.’’ India, meanwhile, already had a second line of defence ready in the form of National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, who had a much more substantive conversation with his US counterpart Steve Hadley.

It is learnt that New Delhi had, a few days ago, proposed to the US that in order to break the reprocessing deadlock, India would dedicate a national facility for storage of the spent fuel from the safeguarded civilian nuclear reactors.

This offer had been made on the eve of the visit of top US diplomat Nicholas Burns to India last week, and Narayanan, who keeps in constant touch with Hadley, had now put forward this proposal to him in Heilingendamm.

Official sources, describing the storage facility as a ``concession’’ and a ``step back’’ from the position that India had earlier adopted on reprocessing, said they hoped they would get a positive response from the US side.

Asked in what way India considered it a concession, the sources said the dedicated national facility, which stored the spent fuel from the already safeguarded nuclear reactors would also be open to inspectors from the IAEA.

The officials said they hoped the US would be able to look at this proposal carefully and that Bush would take a ``political call’’ on the fact that New Delhi was willing to meet the Americans half-way.

According to the July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 agreements with the US, India’s understanding remained that full reprocessing rights by India would be allowed. However, if the US had had any second thoughts, the officials said, India would like to make every effort to go half-way and break any deadlock.

It was not clear whether the PM had managed to convey India’s hopes that Bush would be able to take a ``political call’’ on the now stalled nuclear deal with India, since the meeting was for such a short period. Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon was with the PM when he met Bush.

As for the other major obstacle on the nuclear deal, that is immunity for a strategic fuel reserve, officials said they hoped that the concessional offer on reprocessing would also convince the US that it could trust India that it would carry its side of the bargain.

The officials pointed out that on the night of March 1-2, 2006, when Bush had arrived in India for his pathbreaking visit, officials from both sides were locked in negotiations for most of the night also on the fuel reserve matter. The Indian side had then proposed to put that fuel under safeguards in perpetuity in order to take the negotiations forward.

The Prime Minister also took a short walk with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and met the new president of France Nicholas Sarkozy as well as the outgoing PM of Britain Tony Blair.

ENDS