India looks to 'foreign' help to save nuke deal

Having left the nuclear deal almost until the eleventh hour, India and its international allies are trying to scrounge for ways to save the nuclear deal — and looking for ways to "telescope" the next few stages.

Left to itself, the next stages of the IAEA ratification and the NSG approval could take months that would go beyond the timeline of both the UPA government and the Bush administration. But the better part of the nuclear world like the UK, US, Russia and France are all openly backing the India-US nuclear deal at this moment.

Diplomatic sources said India would be able to count on many more helping hands, because nobody really wants to see India lose this opportunity.

At the IAEA stage, Indian officials haven't yet been given the green signal from the government to go ahead to the next step. But (if and) when they do, they will initial the finalized draft, which then becomes a finalized text. While this text will be sent to the board of governors by the IAEA secretariat, there is a possibility that NSG leaders like UK, US, Russia and France could circulate the finalized text at the NSG.

The hope is that it may be possible to work on the NSG exemption and the IAEA governors' approval almost simultaneously. This would be unusual, said sources, but not impossible, because most of the IAEA governors are NSG members.

The NSG deliberations will take a minimum of two months before any exemption can be forthcoming. At this stage, it will already be September-October, which would include forcing many Europeans to forego their vacation in August.

If this tight timetable can be followed, US President George Bush could be writing out a presidential determination on the deal by October. The determination is to the US Congress to approve the package — 123 agreement, IAEA safeguards (which should have been approved by the governors by then) and the NSG waiver.

If the Congress receives the determination before it breaks for elections in November, it could take it up during the lame duck session before January 2009. This would involve its own "telescoping" but that would be the US' responsibility, not India's.

All of this is terribly ambitious depending on virtually precision timing and coordinated efforts by many countries apart from India and US to get this deal done. It's a kind of racing the clock that, in many ways, has characterized the deal so far — with its numerous near-death experiences.

The government seems determined, said sources. On Monday, minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma said in Dubai, "The nuclear deal with the US will help in ending nearly four decades of nuclear apartheid for India during which there were no transfer of technology. In the coming years, India will need a lot of energy, especially nuclear energy, to fuel its growth which has nearly touched 10%," he said.