India-U.S. Meet Soon To Complete Remaining Steps On N-deal

By siliconindia | Thursday, 05 February 2015, 11:42 Hrs

WASHINGTON: US and Indian officials will meet shortly to put in place a few remaining steps on the India-US nuclear deal after the "breakthrough understanding" between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a senior US official.

"Essentially, what you're seeing with the breakthrough on civ-nuke is that at a policy level, there are no further impediments," Phil Reiner, White House's senior director for South Asian Affairs, told the foreign media Tuesday in a round table on Obama's India trip.

"It's now for operationalisation" and "the governments don't necessarily get involved in the decisions that companies make", he said.

"But at this point, what we've done is we've removed the ambiguity that was preventing those companies from moving forward," Reiner said.

US officials have said that the understanding on the liability issue is between the two governments and it was up to the companies to do their own risk assessment before entering into commercial contracts.

Source: IANS