India to Pursue IAEA Safeguards Talks

Indian leaders said they would begin negotiating a nuclear safeguards arrangement with the U.N. nuclear watchdog today after Indian communists reversed their previous stance against the talks, Bloomberg reported (see GSN, Nov. 13).

The ruling coalition’s communist allies said they would no longer object to government efforts to meet the requirement for a pending nuclear trade agreement with the United States on the condition that they can approve the deal before it is signed.

“The government will proceed with the talks and the outcome will be presented to the committee for consideration before it finalizes its findings,” Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said following a meeting today of a joint panel of communists and ruling coalition members formed to consider objections to the nuclear agreement.

“The findings of the committee will be taken into account before operationalization of the India-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement,” he said (Bibhudatta Pradhan, Bloomberg, Nov. 16).

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