Date:13/02/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/13/stories/2008021360031200.htm

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Nuclear deal could be delayed: Canadian envoy

Staff Reporter

KOCHI: Canada’s High Commissioner to India David M. Malone said on Tuesday that the India-U.S. nuclear deal would probably be put off by a year or two, “unless something changes politically in Delhi.”

Interacting with the faculty and students of the School of Management Studies on the Cochin University of Science and Technology campus here, he said countries such as Russia and France, which would like to cooperate actively with India in this area, would wait along with the U.S.

“The urgency for Canada to think about all of these was less than it would be if it had to adopt a decision in the Nuclear Suppliers Group next week,” he said.

Terming the deal a very exciting topic, he said: “Everything depends on what politicians in Delhi would decide in the coming weeks and months and what the next American government decides, if it does not go through now.”

Pointing out that 45 countries (members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group) had a veto over the agreement, he said that was the nature of international relations today.

“It is not one country to one country but how groups of countries relate to each other within constituencies that varies according to the subject matter and most of which India plays an important role in although it is not yet a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.”

Canada-India relations on nuclear issues had become subsumed under a much more ambitious international negotiation between the U.S. and India, Mr. Malone said and added that the Russians and the French were queuing to cooperate with India in the nuclear field. “But they are waiting until the U.S.-India deal goes through.”

The relationship between India and Canada had suffered for over 30 years. Private sectors in the countries and the governments went on collaborating in all sorts of ways. “This changed about five years ago when both governments, again for their own reasons, woke up to the fact that allowing one issue to dominate the relationship was a bad idea, and that we could agree to disagree about what happened in 1974 and move on recognising that India had not proliferated internationally since it created nuclear weapons,” he said.