New Delhi: Giving an account of how this week's nuclear agreement between India and the United States remained touch and go till the last minute, authoritative sources said here on Saturday that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush held most of their one-on-one meeting without knowing whether their negotiators had actually managed to strike a deal.

It was only when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice entered the meeting room at Hyderabad House that the two leaders learned the final hurdle had been crossed, the sources said.

In the meantime, the freewheeling discussion between them had seen Dr. Singh gently advising Mr. Bush not to be too zealous in his crusade for "democracy" worldwide: "As an older man to a younger one, let me say that one should not expect all societies to be transformed overnight mechanically," Dr. Singh cautioned his guest.

Clear signal

Describing Mr. Bush as "an uncomplicated man", the sources said it was only because he had sent a clear signal to his negotiating team that the nuclear agreement was clinched. "Quite honestly, we never believed the U.S. would agree to us keeping 35 per cent of our capacity outside of safeguards."

Two days before Mr. Bush was to arrive in India, the sources said, Ms. Rice telephoned the Prime Minister to say his negotiators were making "impossible demands." The U.S. was insisting on the fast breeder programme being safeguarded and said India must agree to place a larger number of its power reactors on to the civilian list.

Dr. Singh replied that having just made a statement in Parliament about India's nuclear separation plans, he would not be able to go beyond the parameters mentioned there.

To this, Ms. Rice raised two further issues. "She said India cannot have conditional safeguards and that if it didn't agree to permanent safeguards there would be no deal," the sources said.

She added that there were questions about India's future reactors and that India must place all its future civilian reactors under safeguards. Dr. Singh agreed to this demand, provided the U.S. recognised that the decision to classify future reactors as military or civilian was India's alone.

Even so, the safeguards hurdle remained. When Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice alighted from Air Force One at the Delhi airport, she repeated the issue of permanent safeguards.

"The Prime Minister turned to President Bush and said that since India wanted permanent fuel supply for its safeguarded reactors "there was a difference only of language." At this point, Mr. Bush told National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan he wanted the deal.

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