The United States is close to reaching a nuclear cooperation agreement with India and may finalize it before President George W. Bush visits there in March, a senior State Department official said Friday. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who visited India last week to negotiate details of the deal, told reporters he was confident the agreement would be reached soon. "I think we have made a lot of progress over the last six months. I was not discouraged by my talks in Delhi last week," Burns said. "It is my assessment-and I have been the one negotiating this for six months-that we are very close to an agreement." Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed last July on an accord on civil nuclear energy that would reverse a 30-year-old ban on nuclear cooperation with New Delhi. However, details of the deal still must be negotiated, including a plan to separate India's civil and military nuclear facilities. The deal also must be approved by the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and the U.S. Congress. In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the two sides were making progress but India had to make some "difficult choices" for the final agreement to be reached. She did not provide specifics.
