US Ambassador to India meets Pranab today

David C Mulford seeks to know India's mind on the future of the Indo-US nuclear deal, lying in the limbo.

With uncertainty over the Indo-US nuclear deal, US Ambassador to India David C Mulford on Monday night met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi and is understood to have sought to know India's mind on the future of the agreement.

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During the 45-minute meeting, Mukherjee is understood to have conveyed to Mulford the political compulsions the UPA government have in not going ahead with the deal for now but expressed the determination to push it through at a later stage.

The US envoy articulated his country's main concern about the future of the deal in the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's remark at the Hindustan Times Leadership summit in New Delhi that non-implementation of the agreement was not the end of life.

The meeting between Mukherjee and Mulford came on a day when US President George W Bush spoke to Singh, now in Nigeria, over telephone and heard the Prime Minister talking of "certain difficulties" in respect of operationalization of the nuclear deal.