• Senator Joe Biden said something that I should repeat here. He said a new Democratic administration would re-negotiate the deal. Is it possible to negotiate such a deal, because that could be the case?

I doubt that very much. If you have a Senator (Barack) Obama or a Senator (John) McCain or a Senator (Hillary) Clinton assuming the office of the President of the United States, any of those three administrations will be dealing with a new mood in the U.S. with regard to the nuclear issue. That mood is likely to translate into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an important four-letter-word in the Indian language.

• There’s one more four-letter-word — the FMCT, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.

There you go. My guess is, and it can only be a guess, that whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House, those two treaties are going to be on a faster track, from the American standpoint. And that in itself will change the context within which the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation deal will be addressed. That doesn’t mean going back and re-negotiating it. But what it does argue for is the Indian side doing what I think Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to do — get the thing done, get the implementation begun. Because if India does that, the next administration, the next U.S. Senate in Congress will be dealing with a fait accompli (rather) than inherit something that is in limbo.

• So it’s not just a question of re-negotiation. It’s a done deal and it’s going to be tough to re-negotiate. It’s what the BJP is saying here in India.

... contd.