Bush, Manmohan discuss N-deal

Indian prime minister and US president discusses the civil nuclear deal, which would be operational once the remaining issues on the 123 agreement are solved, reports Aloke Tikku.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United States President George Bush discussed on Wednesday the civil nuclear deal, which would be operational once the remaining issues on the 123 agreement are solved.

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National Security Adviser (NSA) MK Narayanan is travelling to the United States this weekend to hold talks on the nuclear deal with US NSA Stephen Hadley and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns.

The two leaders expressed satisfaction at the strong India-US bilateral relationship and spoke about the forthcoming meeting between the National Security Advisers of both countries, scheduled for next week.

"They (Singh and Bush) were of the view that these discussions will reinforce our strong bilateral relations," the Prime Minister's media adviser, Sanjaya Baru, said in a statement after the telephonic conversation between the two leaders on Wednesday evening.

Singh and the US President also said that they both looked forward to continuing their own discussions at their next meeting.

Singh had acknowledged last week that two or three issues needed to be sorted out before the two countries could reach a solution, but had refused to predict a timeframe. Differences on issues such as the grant of reprocessing rights to India have stood in the way until now.

These are intricate issues that the US Ambassador to India, David C Mulford, recently said needed highly complex negotiations, from both the political as well as technical perspectives.

The two sides expect that meetings lined up next week by Narayanan and foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon would take the two sides closer to the end of the road.