US says no to changing laws for nuke deal with India

WASHINGTON: Expressing frustration over the slow pace of negotiations on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, the Bush administration, however, has made it clear that some of the things insisted upon by India require changing American laws which cannot be accomodated.

"Fair to say that there's probably some frustration of the administration as well as the Congress on the pace of these negotiations," State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said.

His comments assume significance as they came days ahead of a scheduled visit of Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on April 30 and May one to Washington followed by a visit of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to India in May to speed up the negotiations.

Replying to a query on Burns' visit, he said, "Nobody's questioning the Indian government's goodwill and good faith in this regard. And it's a useful opportunity to bump up the level of discussions to take stock of where we are right now, so you have essentially a political-level discussion, as opposed to just the experts-level discussion. And they're going to explore ways that we can energize the discussions so that we can get this done."

"We still have faith that we're going to be able to get this agreement done, and we believe that the Indian government is committed to that. But we're at a stage in these particular negotiations where we think we need to raise the level of dialogue to a political level in order to move it forward," McCormack added making the point that he will not go to the extent of saying that all hope is lost.

"As a matter of fact, I would put it in the positive. I would say that we believe that these negotiations will ultimately yield an agreement that will allow us to move forward and fully implement the deal previously," McCormack said and refused to get into the details of what the specific frustrations of the administration are with the Government of India.

"I don't want to get into specific issues because it's in negotiation. But the Indian government has raised a series of issues in these negotiations concerning our laws and suggesting solutions that would require us to change us laws. And we just, we're not going to do that. We can't do that.

"So we would suggest that we set aside that group of issues, and let's focus on areas where the two governments can negotiate and come to agreement. And it has been our suggested tactic that we focus on defining what are those baskets of issues. What are the basket of issues that would require changes to the U.S. law? Put those aside. Let's define and work on those issues that we can actually negotiate on, that wouldn't necessitate changes to law," he said.

"We've already passed legislation. And this is, this would require, this is an implementing agreement that itself would also have to be approved by the Congress. But we're not willing to consider at this point any further changes to our laws," McCormack insisted.

Asked if India was conveyed this, the spokesman said, "Look, we're not going to change our law. Just drop this. It's a dead end."

"They have not taken that hint?" he was asked.

"It's a good question. It deserves a fair answer. And there were a series of discussions at the expert level in Cape Town. And those discussions moved forward, but they didn't quite yield the results that we had hoped for. So we're going to take this up to a higher, take the opportunity of Foreign Secretary Menon's visit to the United States to have a political-level dialogue," McCormack said.

The senior State department official emphasized that he would characterise the Cape Town Talks as having broken down, but only that the two sides had not made progress that was anticipated.

Asked if the United States has started looking at a deadline or a realistic timeline to bring closure on the issue, McCormack argued that the administration would like to have the agreement in the timeline of the Bush administration.

"We hope to move it forward as quickly as we possibly can. But there are certain realities of the legislative calendar here and certain realities, this administration has about 20 months left in office. So we would very much like to conclude this agreement in the Bush administration. President Bush has been responsible for fundamentally changing the, at least on the US side, the US-India relationship," the spokesman said.