WASHINGTON: The United States has said it acted in good faith in the negotiations on the proposed 123 agreement with India to operationalise civil nuclear cooperation.

"Certainly, we have acted in good faith in these negotiations to see that they move forward and we can only assume that that is the motivation of the Indian Government as well," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters when he was asked to comment on the recently concluded talks.

"Technical stuff"

The agreement being negotiated was highly technical, he said.

"This is all highly technical stuff. Off the top of my head, I do not know. There are some areas that the Indians have raised and that has caused us to raise some questions back to them as well.

"So we're — Nick [Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns] is going to take the information that he receives from the negotiating team that's just returning. He's going to do a conversation in-house here to assess where we are in these negotiations."

The 123 agreement will enable India to get U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors, ending a 30-year freeze.

Bid to bridge gaps

At the two-day talks in New Delhi earlier this week, the two sides indicated a narrowing down of some differences. Both sides are trying to bridge gaps in issues such as fuel supply assurances, reprocessing of spent fuel and future nuclear testing by India.

Mr. McCormack said the Bush administration had already worked with Congress to pass the overall legislation as part of total implementation of the civil nuclear deal. "The negotiations have taken some time. These are tough negotiations. I guess that's the way I'd put it right now. And once we have an opportunity to assess where we are in those negotiations, I think we'll probably have Nick go back to the Indians at the political level to really have a conversation about where we are and what's needed in order to move forward and successfully complete these negotiations."

Reality of politics

Mr. McCormack parried a query on the time frame for the next negotiating session. "I can't tell you. We'll have to do an in-house assessment and see where we are."

"...everybody has their own politics... we had our own politics in working with Congress to pass the overall legislation, so everybody has politics. That's just the reality of democracies dealing with one another. We expect at this point that the Indians do want to move forward with these negotiations and we're acting on that basis."

PTI

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