Indo-US nuke deal discussion on July 16

NEW DELHI: National Security Adviser M K Narayanan will hold talks with his US counterpart Stephen Hadley in Washington on July 16 to thrash out the differences over the nuclear deal between the two countries.  

Narayanan, who will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, is also expected to discuss the issue with US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, sources said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had, last week, expressed the hope that the 123 agreement, necessary to operationalise the July 2005 deal, would be clinched by the end of the year.

The two countries had held technical level talks in Washington last week to narrow their differences on India's insistence on retaining its right to conduct nuclear tests and reprocess the spent fuel and on its demand for uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel.

India's High Commissioner to Singapore S Jai Shankar, an authority on nuclear diplomacy and a key negotiator of the deal, was in Washington last week and held discussions for three days with US officials.

The meeting between the NSAs comes ahead of Ms Rice's visit to Delhi in about a month.

According to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ''one or two issues'' are yet to be resolved and the deal would hopefully come through soon.