India may wrap up IAEA safeguards talk by month end

India hopes to wrap up a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency later this month in Vienna, before approaching the Nuclear Suppliers Group, for changes to permit international nuclear commerce.

"We hope to do another round (of negotiations) in the middle of January in Vienna. We hope to wrap it up. The discussions are proceeding smoothly," said Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.

"We hope to reach a rapid and satisfactory conclusion," he said.

India needs to reach a safeguards agreement and then get the nod of the 45-member NSG for operationalising the India-United States civil nuclear agreement.

Asked whether India would seek China's support at the National Security Group during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's three-day visit to Beijing beginning Sunday, Menon said, "we have not actually come to that stage."

When it reaches the NSG, India will seek the support of all countries for an unconditional NSG exemption to it, he said.

Official sources said that the next round of talks is likely to take place from January 16. The two sides had failed to reach an agreed text in the last round earlier this month. It got stuck on the issue of India's right to hold its strategic reserve to cater to a lifetime supply to its civilian nuclear plants.

There was also no meeting point on the issue of corrective measures to be undertaken in the event of stoppage of fuel to power plants, sources said.

It was important that India and the IAEA come to some kind of understanding in the next round of talks and finalise the text, otherwise India would not be able to meet the deadline to clinch the civil nuclear deal.

Only when the IAEA prepares a final agreed text, which has to be cleared by its Board of Governors, the US could go ahead with its talks with the 45-member Nuclear Supplier's Group to get a clean and unconditional exemption for India to do nuclear commerce internationally.

The talks, a follow up to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, are one of the pre-requisites for operationalisation of the deal, first mooted in July 2005.

It is expected that the text, drafted by the IAEA, would be brought back before the 15-member UPA-Left committee for deliberations after the next round of talks, sources said.