India and the United States plan to resume talks on a much-touted civilian nuclear cooperation agreement when the top American negotiator visits New Delhi this week in a push to overcome obstacles that threaten to scuttle the pact, the U.S. embassy said Sunday. Word that U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is coming to New Delhi follows reports earlier this month that he had put off a visit because the two sides were too far apart on a number of key issues, the Associated Press reported. How wide a gap remains between the two sides is still an open question. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi would only say that Burns is coming Thursday for a two-day visit, and pointed to a statement he made earlier this month about the deal. «This is the right agreement for us and we need to make a final push to cement it,» Burns said in a May 23 talk at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. «Like all good things, this will take time and more compromise from both countries.» Still, Burns' visit was the first bit of good news for the deal since an earlier round of high-level talks ended on May 1 with an optimistic pronouncement that he would be coming to India in the last half of May to finalize the pact, heralded as the first step in an emerging strategic partnership between New Delhi and Washington.
