New Delhi: US President Barack Obama and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi have made a historic breakthrough in the nuclear deal on Sunday.
With a win for the Modi government, the US backed off from their want of monitoring use of any material or equipment in a US reactor even if it was sourced from a third country. India has seen this as an extremely intrusive measure which it believed impinged on its nuclear sovereignty.
Stalled since 2008, the advancement comes after many stumbling blocks on the nuclear issue, including a liability law in which India holds the suppliers directly liable in case of a nuclear accident. Countries like France and the US, however had asked India to follow global norms under which the primary liability was with the operator.
Another contentious clause in the liability law was unlimited liability for which international companies would have found it difficult to get insurers.
India and the US have negotiated on these clauses for long, and now it seems the two leaders have used their growing proximity to seal the deal. The formal announcement on their talks in Hyderabad House will take place shortly.