With the US Congress set to put its final stamp of approval to the Indo-US nuclear deal soon, Washington’s pointsperson for nuclear deal negotiations Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns today sought to address Indian apprehensions by making it clear that he anticipated a “successful” and “supportive” Bill that will be “well within the parameters” of July 18 and March 2 statements.

Underlining that the US Congress had been “supportive in every way” to the Bush Administration on taking the legislative process ahead, he said the final text of the Bill was still to be seen but he was confident that there was nothing which would come in the way of Washington fulfilling all its obligations under the deal.

“The United States intends to meet all its commitments to India (made on July 18 and March 2). This includes those (commitments) of fuel assurances,” he said after holding consultations with Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on the N-deal Shyam Saran, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.

According to him, the last 18 months was the most difficult phase of operationalising the deal and the next steps would be relatively “less difficult”. Responding to queries on the linkages in the proposed legislation to the Iran nuclear issue, Burns said India was in the “mainstream of international opinion” on this issue and, along with countries like China, Egypt, Russia and Brazil, has sent a “strong message” to Teheran that it cannot have a nuclear weapons programme. “All of us want Iran to gets its right to civil nuclear energy”.

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