Nicholas Burns

Washington, May 27: When you continue to have differences on policy that appear irreconcilable, take a holiday among your negotiating adversaries.

US President George W. Bush’s pointman for the nuclear negotiations with India, under-secretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns, seems to have heeded that advice when he decided to take a break in India with his family built around the resumption of his tortuous negotiations with Indian officials on Thursday.

An aide to Burns, who told The Telegraph about the holiday of the American negotiator, declined to be specific about his sudden vacation in India in order to prevent media interest in the US diplomat created by continuing differences over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

But it is an indication of the feverish activity in New Delhi to bridge those differences ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with Bush in Germany in about 10 days.

Burns will be available to top Indian officials during his holiday for consultations without having to give the unfavourable impression that he is in India for almost a week engaged in tough talks with the Indian government.

A three-member team from India met US interlocutors in London a few days ago, but gaps on the so-called 123 Agreement needed to implement the deal under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act were not bridged during the talks, sources here who are privy to the negotiations said.

On May 1, Burns and foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon agreed on the only formula which could have taken the deal forward.

They agreed to limit the 123 pact to the areas of mutual agreement, but that would have scaled down the scope of the nuclear deal.

However, according to highly-placed sources in New Delhi, the compromise was rejected when it was presented to the Prime Minister’s Office.

As a result, officials of the Department of Atomic Energy were not even briefed on the compromise.

The rejection occurred because of three reasons.

Serious doubts about pursuing the nuclear deal in its present form have resurfaced in the mind of national security adviser M.K. Narayanan.

Narayanan was extremely reluctant on the evening of July 17, 2005, in his approval of the original deal when it was put to the Indian delegation that was accompanying the Prime Minister to the White House.

Subsequently, he changed his mind and was persuaded that the deal was good for India, but new doubts have surfaced in his mind in recent weeks because of the twists and turns in the negotiations.

Second, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, met the foreign secretary recently and dropped broad hints that he would resign rather than agree to any compromises that restrained India’s nuclear programme.

The Indian nuclear establishment is understood to have been extremely upset that the negotiations with the Americans in Washington on April 30 and May 1 did not include their representatives and was perceived by nuclear scientists as an attempt by the Prime Minister’s Office and sections in the ministry of external affairs to bypass them.

As a result of their protest, a scientist, who is Kakodkar’s alter ego, and a South Block director who has the reputation of an upright and no-nonsense official, were included in the latest round of talks with the US held in London.

The third and probably the most significant cause for rejecting the Washington compromise was the dominant view in India’s Department of Atomic Energy that they wanted “all or nothing” from the nuclear deal with the Americans.