11.2.10

India and UK to sign civil nuclear agreement today

India and UK will finally sign the civil nuclear agreement in New Delhi on Thursday. The nuclear pact, which follows similar agreements with France, Russia and others, will be signed between Atomic Energy Commission chairman S Bannerjee and British High Commissioner Richard Stagg at South Block. The Cabinet nod for the India-US civilian nuclear pact had came through last week. Last week, the UK business secretary Lord Peter Mandelson had announced that UK and India had agreed on the text of a landmark civil nuclear deal and that a formal pact could be signed soon. This announcement was made during commerce minister Anand Sharma’s visit to the UK for the meeting of the Joint Economic and Trade Committee. Britain, which has a nuclear industry that exports nuclear equipment worth over £700 million, has been eager to sign the pact with India, but procedural delays have been getting in the way of putting the final stamp of approval on the pact. During negotiations, the Indian side was against allowing any non-proliferation references to be included in the text of the agreement, sources had said. A reference to the fissile material cut-off treaty was among the issues that India did not want in the text of the agreement. This issue was resolved with India’s concerns being taken on board. The Indo-UK civilian nuclear pact will be the seventh civil nuclear agreement to be signed by the government after India got the IAEA and NSG nod and inked the ground-breaking nuclear agreement with the US. Apart from the US, India has signed agreements on civilian nuclear agreement with France, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Argentina and Namibia. India has already finalised a civilian nuclear pact with Canada, which is expected to be signed this year during a high-level visit. These developments are also expected to bring into sharp focus the Indo-US cooperation which is pending the finalisation of a reprocessing agreement and other steps. The deadline for the reprocessing agreement is August. Last week, US President Barack Obama in a presidential memorandum had certified that India has placed its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards.

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