A DAY after India and US held another round of technical talks on the 123 bilateral agreement in London, the US today said 90 per cent progress had been made and “some compromises” were required from both sides to finalise the deal.

Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, key negotiator of the deal from the US side, said he would be travelling to India in the next week or two for the “final effort” on the 123 agreement. “We have made enormous progress... We are 90 per cent there... In the next few weeks, we can see a major effort,” he said, speaking on India-US relations at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Noting that it had taken “longer than we thought” to finalise the agreement, talks for which started two years ago, Burns said he looked forward to his upcoming visit to India for the “final effort”. He said the civil nuclear agreement, that will symbolically represent growth of Indo-US relations, was an “enormously complex” issue and had been going through intense scrutiny in Indian Parliament as was expected in a democracy.

Underlining that both countries were keen to conclude the deal, Burns expressed confidence that they will be able to get to the “mountain-top” and finalise it. “I am convinced that we are going to get to the mountaintop,” he added. He said he will talk to Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon in a day or two to decide on the date of his visit to India for further discussions with him. The two last met here on May 1.

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