The stage has been set for a four-day November visit to India by United States President Barack Obama with the signature on Friday of a nuclear reprocessing pact that finally eliminates all obstacles and allows US companies to commence nuclear trade with India.
India's ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, and America's top diplomat, William Burns, signed the 'Arrangements and Procedures' document at a small ceremony at the US State Department in Washington, a leftover but an integral piece of legislation that will now be added to the 2008 India-US civil nuclear agreement which allowed India to become the world's newest de facto nuclear weapons power.
But since the Indo-US nuclear deal was largely seen in India as a sweetheart deal on part of the Bush administration, the Indian elite chose to reserve judgement on Obama, his successor, until they had seen concrete evidence of the much-hyped 'partnership' between the two countries.
The signature of assent, on the remnant but crucial piece of legislation relating to the civil nuclear deal, is evidence of Obama's conviction that the time has come to launch "a brand new era, characterised by joint cooperation in innovation, education and other challenging new frontiers" with India, said US officials here on condition of anonymity.
This latest agreement allows India to reprocess nuclear fuel from reactors sold by US companies to India such as General Electric and Westinghouse in a reprocessing facility built in India, which will be safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The US officials also pointed out, however, that India would now have to pass the Nuclear Liability Bill in Parliament, which protects consumers in case of a nuclear accident as well as charges the operator with damages, before the civil nuclear deal could be fully completed.
"The ball is now in India's court," a US official said.
The deal will now allow these US companies to compete with Russia and France and lately the UK in India's lucrative nuclear energy market which is estimated at $100 billion over the next 20 years. India has vowed to expand its nuclear energy capacity from the current lowly 6,000 megawatt (Mw) to 35,000 Mw by 2022 and 65,000 Mw by 2032.
US companies have already been allocated two sites in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh (the Russians have been allocated a new site at Kudamkulam in Tamil Nadu and Haripur in West Bengal, while the French have been given the Jaitapur site in Maharashtra) to build their nuclear plants, but had been hamstrung by the lack of this legislation to finalise their plans for an India entry.
Significantly, India is only the third after Japan and the European nuclear agency, Euratom, with which the US has signed such a nuclear reprocessing agreement.
Indian officials agreed that with this piece of legislation Obama has not only signalled that he agrees with the Bush administration's decision to break the old mould and create a new partnership with India, but that he intends to shatter the stereotype prevalent both in New Delhi and Washington that a Democrat administration is only interested in lecturing India about "human rights violations in Kashmir or reinventing the India-Pakistan hyphen," the officials said.
As both sides breathed a sigh of relief at the signing of the agreement, they pointed out that it had set the stage for Obama's visit to India in November.
