•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.