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March 31, 2007 11:09 IST
The United States expects, at this point, that India does want to move forward with the negotiations concerning the civilian nuclear deal and we are acting on that basis, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has said.
"There are some issues the Indians have raised and that has caused us to raise some questions back to them as well. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns is going to take the information that he receives from the negotiating team that is just returning (from New Delhi). He is going to hold a conversation in-house here to assess where we are in these negotiations," McCormack told media persons on Friday. "We have already worked with Congress to pass the overall legislation. This is part of one of the steps that is required to fully implement the deal that we have with the Indian government. The negotiations have taken some time. These are tough negotiations. I guess that is the way I had put it right now," he said.
"And once we have an opportunity to assess where we are in these negotiations, I think we will probably have Burns go back to the Indians at the political level to really have a conversation about where we are and what is need in order to move forward and successfully complete these negotiations," the spokesman pointed out.
When asked about the date of the next negotiating session and if it was going to be months or weeks away, McCormack replied: "I can't tell you. We will have to do an in-house assessment and see where we are. Certainly, we have acted in good faith in these negotiations to see that they move forward and we can only assume that is the motivation of the Indian government as well."
On whether he thinks the Indian government is acting in good faith at the moment or it is a lot of politics on their side too, he said: "Look, everybody has their own politics. You know, we had our own politics in working with the Congress to pass the overall legislation, so everybody has politics. That is just the reality of democracies dealing with one another."
UNI
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