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WASHINGTON : The United States said Tuesday that a landmark nuclear accord with India could be salvaged even after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted having trouble pushing the controversial agreement within his coalition government.
"It's not dead," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said after Singh explained to President George W. Bush that "certain difficulties" had arisen in implementing the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement.
Singh, who had been pushing for the conclusion of the deal as his key foreign policy achievement, conveyed the message to Bush during a phone conversation late Monday.
It was a new sign that Singh's key Congress party may have caved in to pressure from communist and other left-wing parties that prop up the government in parliament.
Fratto said India needed to be given time to digest the deal, first agreed more than two years ago between Bush and Singh as a key component of a strategic partnership between the world's two giant democracies.
"India is a thriving democracy and they have work to do and they may need some additional time on their end to get their part of this deal done," he said.
"The President is willing and is very understanding that the Indians may need more time for this. But no, it's not - it's not dead," he said.
The United States hopes India "will decide to move forward with this agreement and we like to see it completed in 2008," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.
"The United States has worked very hard and has met its commitments under the agreement and we are going to continue to work hard to fulfil it," Casey said.
Washington, he pointed out, did not want to interfere in India's internal politics.
Opponents of the deal in the ruling Indian coalition are worried that traditionally non-aligned India is getting too close to Washington, and that the government may be compromising the future development of the country's nuclear weapons programme.
Left-wing parties have been threatening to withdraw their support for the government in parliament over the deal, a move that would force early elections.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the US Arms Control Association, said even though the deal was not dead, "it is certainly in the hospital and the prospects that it can be revived are looking dimmer and dimmer."
Under the agreement, the United States would provide India with nuclear fuel and technology even though the Asian nuclear-armed giant has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In exchange, India must put selected nuclear facilities under international safeguards, including inspections.
The nuclear deal's operational agreement was adopted in August after two years of complex negotiations and New Delhi must still sign a separate pact with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and get the thumbs-up from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group, which controls global nuclear commerce.
This needs to be done before mandatory final approval from the US Congress, where legislators have vowed to give the deal close scrutiny.
Even if the Indian government concludes a safeguards agreement with the IAEA in the weeks ahead, it may miss the opportunity to have the agency's board of governors consider the pact at its meeting scheduled to begin November 22, Kimball said.
The next regular IAEA board meeting is in February 2008.
Without the safeguards agreement, Kimball added, Nuclear Suppliers Group member states would not be willing to take a decision on a US plan to exempt India from the the group's stringent guidelines.
The group's next consultative group meeting is scheduled for November 14-16 in Vienna.
"By itself, such a delay puts the deal in jeopardy because it leaves little time for consideration by the IAEA and NSG and perhaps too little time for Congress to review the controversial and flawed bilateral US-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement before adjournment in the early fall of 2008," he said. - AFP/ch
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