SME Times News Bureau | 05 Feb, 2015
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.
"There's a few steps that still need to be put in place; for example,
there will be a conference in the relative near term on how to build the
insurance pool elements that will go into actually making this a reality,"
Reiner said.
"But it's a massive breakthrough that's held us up for years, that's prevented
us from being able to take those next steps," he said.
"At a policy level, we've been able to push at the leader level to get
past that. That is tangible progress."
According to reports, the state-backed insurance pool would cover operator
liabilities of up to Rs.15 billion ($242.8 million).
India has allotted project sites for two 1000 mw nuclear reactors each by US
companies Westinghouse and GE-Hitachi in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh
respectively. But no work has started on either due to the nuclear logjam.