This puts to rest speculation over the Tom Lantos proposal—it has now been withdrawn—that the Congress will first pass a “sense of the Congress” resolution and vote on the Bill only after other conditions like the bilateral agreement and the safeguards agreement are negotiated.

On the issue of the deal going off in case India were to test a device, the sense is very clear that Washington has this law in place internally but it won’t be part of the bilateral agreement.

US is inclined to accept a wording that reaffirms India’s commitment to voluntary moratorium on testing. This is expected to be formalised in the talks starting tomorrow. Also, it was clarified in London that the Congressional waiver will be a one-time affair and not done annually as was being suggested in some quarters.

There has been criticism that India placed far too many facilities like the Nuclear Fuel Complex are under safeguards apart from the 14 reactors. It’s, however, learnt that what has been undertaken is a firewalling within the NFC so that separate processing can be feasible for civilian and military facilities.

Sources clarified that the entire NFC will not be under safeguards, just units that will be needed for processing fuel obtained from abroad have been separated from the rest which can be used for strategic purposes. This is a logical step in separating civilian and military fuel cycles.

The separation plan tabled in Parliament lists nine research facilities as civilian. But these will be “safeguards irrelevant”, which means they will not be part of any safeguards arrangement—as was largely interpreted—but have been declared civilian so that they can enter into international cooperation.

... contd.