With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George Bush agreeing on the margins of G-8 in Germany that the civil nuclear deal is “do-able”, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said Washington should not “transfer its problems” to New Delhi.

“They (the US) say that they have some problems. We say do not transfer your problems to us,” he said in Karan Thapar’s Devil’s Advocate programme while discussing Washington’s reluctance to grant reprocessing right to India.

On the differences between the two countries over the issue of reprocessing of the spent fuel, Mukherjee emphasised that the right to reprocessing is “absolutely necessary” for India, and said that the Government would not like the nuclear cooperation agreement to have any impact on the country’s indigenous strategic programme. Mukherjee also underlined that the reprocessing right to India will have to be specific to it as New Delhi is not a signatory of the NPT and its case cannot be compared with that of Japan, China or Eurotom.

India has expressed readiness to set up a dedicated reprocessing facility with safeguards in an effort to break the logjam in talks over the 123 agreement. Mukherjee’s comments on reprocessing rights is likely to assure the Indian nuclear scientists on their worries about this angle in the civil nuclear deal.