By settling for October 22 as the next date for the meeting, sources said, the government is “cutting it very fine” and now runs the risk of losing momentum gained from conclusion of the 123 agreement with the US. While there is no deadline for India, sources said, the fact remains that the Bush Administration will not have the luxury of time in its last year. The delay in making a “formal request” to IAEA for talks has shrunk all margins making it very complicated for negotiators.

Consider these:

•The mutually agreed timeline was that the Bush Administration would approach the US Congress in the third week of January. Working backwards, India hoped to conclude its safeguards agreement with IAEA by next month and the US aimed at obtaining the exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group before the year-end.

•Thereafter, the first couple of weeks were to be used by Washington to prepare the non-proliferation assessment and couple of other documents that need to accompany the 123 agreement when it’s placed before the Congress.

•This agreement has to lie, according to US law, for 90 legislative days before it can be considered approved.

•In all, the understanding was to have the agreement ready for signature, latest, by next Fall.

•While the IAEA Board can be convened to meet on urgent matters in 72 hours, a safeguards agreement with India may not fall in that category. Moreover, IAEA has to give reasonable time for members to read the agreement before approving it.

•Even if India manages to hold back the IAEA board approval for later, many of the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group will have to go back to their governments on the conditions granting India exemption. In some cases, a Cabinet or Parliamentary approval may be needed.

•On the question of safeguards agreement too, India is keen to include fuel supplies assurances in the text. This would be unique for IAEA and may require some amount of negotiations.

If the Bush Administration is unable to approach the US Congress by January, the non-proliferation lobby is likely to get emboldened and increase pressure sensing that Bush will soon become a lame duck President.

While these imponderables exist even now, sources said, the ability to address them will incrementally diminish for India and US as and when more time is lost.

Despite these uncertainties, IAEA Director General Mohammed El-Baradei sounded positive in his first interaction in India, saying IAEA has “always had a fruitful dialogue with the Government of India”.

However, when the contentious topic did come up for a brief while in talks with the Department of Atomic Energy, its head Anil Kakodkar said these issues ought to be discussed in Delhi.