Obama, Modi smiles hide snags in US-India nuclear talks?

By Mubasshir Mushtaq

NEW DELHI

Smiles and embraces shared between U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were the public face of Obama's India visit this week but experts have however questioned whether discussions between the two leaders went so smoothly. 

One of the key concerns is that details of a civil nuclear deal for peaceful purposes have still not released, two days after a "breakthrough" was announced by Obama and Modi on Sunday. 

“The details remain vague, strange as this was projected as the coup d’etat of the great chemistry and friendship struck by PM Modi and President Obama,” said Seema Mustafa, a senior journalist who has followed Indo-US civil nuclear talks for more than a decade.

“The silence and deliberate obfuscation suggests that there is something to hide. And that while both President Obama and PM Modi claim to have given the nod for the deal, there is a clear cut attempt, at least in New Delhi, to gloss over the all important details,” Mustafa said.

Immediately after Obama and Modi announced the "breakthrough" in a joint press conference on Sunday, India’s Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh told reporters that India and U.S. have broken a “logjam.” 

“We have reached an understanding, the nuclear deal is done,” Singh said, without giving further details. 

But Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor accompanying Obama, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi on Monday that the "breakthrough" meant they had reached mutual understanding over certain issues -- not that a deal had been finalized.

“After the Union Carbide disaster it would not be easy for India to accept anything without insurance of life and property of its citizens. So the nuclear dealer has to pass through snags,” said senior analyst Mustafa Khan. 

The two thorny issues holding up the nuclear deal -- which Obama hinted at on Sunday -- are a nuclear liability clause in the case of a nuclear accident and the tracking of nuclear material in India, for security reasons. 

Khan said that the successful implementation of the civil nuclear deal largely depends upon General Electric and Westinghouse, the two U.S. companies who have been allotted land to build nuclear reactors in the western state of Gujarat and southern state of Andhra Pradesh. 

“In what way have the issues that held up the deal been resolved? What is the solution, read compromise, reached?” asked Mustafa, the journalist. 

Khan welcomed growing ties between India and the United States, saying they signal the emergence of a "new" India with increasing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

He said that rather than replacing its traditional partner, Russia, India is taking advantage of both the United States and Russia's eagerness to tap the huge Indian market.

“India has broken grounds in foreign policy by defiantly aligning itself with the United States,” said Khan, adding that India wants to keep its options open with Russia. “Russia and U.S. are checkmating each other. However Russia is an old and trusted ally and India is going with the U.S. because of the entrepreneurship of Modi, who wants to have the cake and eat it also.”

In a media briefing by the U.S.-based Council of Foreign relations, the think-tank's Senior Fellow for South Asia Alyssa Ayres highlighted that India does not intend to lose its partnership with Russia. 

"There is a kind of, you know, effort to make sure India's maintaining good relations across the board. But I just think that Modi is not at all captivated by anxieties or concerns about looking too pro-American. That just isn't something that he worries about," said Ayres.