'We were prepared to walk away from the nuclear agreement'

Former deputy secretary of State  in the Clinton Administration, Strobe Talbott in his book Engaging India talks about how Indian diplomats got the better of their US counterparts. He sort of  implies that despite  the diplomatic niceties, there was a kind of Machiavellian toughness about them. How was it for you dealing with the likes of Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, National Security Adviser (M K ) Narayanan and others? And what do you say to critics in Washignton, DC, who say the US caved in to India because the President wanted to have a deal on his visit to add a substantive tangible facet to it and that India now has its cake and can eat it too?

I would say that this is a deal that is good for both India and the US. Countries don't make agreements that aren't in their national interests. This agreement is in the US national interest as well as India's national interest. We were not prepared to have an agreement at any cost. We were prepared to walk away from the agreement. We had a bottom line. We knew what we had to get. In fact, there were several important issues that were central to us - the fact that India would commit all of its future civilian breeder and thermal reactors under safeguards. Second, the fact that those safeguards would be in place permanently. If we had not been able to achieve those two commitments, we would have not agreed to the deal. I was under very clear instructions from Secretary (Condoleezza) Rice that those were my…that was the goal.  We are confident that this deal is very much in our interests. It's going to strengthen the nonproliferation regime, it's going to help cement the US-India strategic partnership and it is going to unleash, we hope, a new era of cooperation between our industries. We are happy about this agreement.

How about negotiating with the likes of Saran ?  Is there anything to what Talbott and others used to say about these Indian diplomats as really nice chaps but with a Machiavellian steeliness to them?

In American political parlance, Machiavellian is not necessarily a positive attribute to ascribe to a person, and  I will not do that to Shyam Saran and (Joint Secretary, Americas,at the ministry of external affairs Dr S) Jaishankar. They were good negotiating partners. They were very open. As I said, we communicated almost daily over the last several months and they kept their word as did we. Both sides presented a tough negotiating faith as you would expect and both sides believe that the deal is good for both of us. It's not an agreement where one side is going to derive benefits and the other side isn't. It's a deal that makes sense because both sides together are going to feel that you have a new strategic way forward.

A few weeks before the President's trip, you brought in Ashley (Tellis) as your special adviser. Why did you take him on as one of your confidantes and what did he bring to the table?

Ashley has worked for the United States government at several junctures -- at the White House staff as well as in New Delhi -- and he knows more about India's nuclear program than any other living American. And so, I wanted to…I have great respect for him, for his creativity and ingenuity and also for his knowledge and technical expertise, and I felt that he would be a great addition to our staff and our delegation, and he was. He was instrumental in getting a decision.

The nuclear nonproliferation lobby seems to have coalesced and mobilized like never before against the agreement. Did you guys underestimate this lobby?

We all know each other. I have served with some of these people in past government positions and some of them are friends, and some are people we've known in academic circles. They have been criticizing this agreement since last July18 (when the US-Indian joint agreement was signed). It was not a surprise that they would come out after the President's visit to New Delhi and criticize it again - not a surprise at all. But we are confident that they have not presented arguments that have made an impact in looking at the substance in what we've negotiated. Most of the arguments presented are quite weak actually, and we think that they can be effectively rebutted and we are busy doing that. Secretary Rice had an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday (March 13). There have been other op-ed pieces this week by Henry Kissinger, Robert Kagan, that have been strongly supportive of what the Administration is doing. Dr (Mohammad) El Baradei (director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency), who is the defender and protector of the nonproliferation regime worldwide, has come out openly in support of this agreement. (French) President (Jacques) Chirac, (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin, (British) Prime Minister (Tony) Blair, are also in agreement. This is a very formidable cast of international officials who've come to support what India and the United States have done. So, we feel good about what we've been able to achieve.

Also See:
We won't renegotiate N-deal: Bush administration
'There is a cap on India's strategic programme'