US, India seal civil nuclear deal |
US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the two countries had broken an impasse standing in the way of civil nuclear trade. It took six years after signing the deal to cross the hurdles on liability issues. President Obama on his second visit to India, the first by a sitting American President, said that he was honored to be invited and visit India. Calling Prime Minister Modi a friend, Obama insisted that the peoples of the two biggest democratic nations had nurtured a special relationship that was natural. The evidence lay in the fact that the two leaders and countries repose more faith and trust in each other on peace, security and prosperity. After their first round of delegation talks on Sunday January 25th, the two leaders jointly addressed the media and announced they had ironed out differences on the liability of suppliers to India in the event of a nuclear accident and the United States had dropped its demand to be able to track the whereabouts of nuclear material supplied to India. The US President also made it clear that he saw a bigger role for India on the global scene, and promised to support India`s longstanding request to be included as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Obama and Modi bonhomie was evident as they strolled around the gardens, joked and talked like friends, and even admitted to it at the press conference. The two leaders said the defense collaboration and high tech transfer to India would be escalated to new levels, leading also to greater trade. Prime Minister Modi offered the ultimate olive branch to his US counterpart in promising that he would agree to join the US on the much-awaited pact on Climate Change at the 2015 summit in Paris. Modi said he hadn`t succumbed to pressure, but the future generations of India and the world demanded attention to fast-changing global warming and something needed to be done if the world was to be kept intact for the future. Overall, Modi scored another triumph within the first year in office by not just delivering a glamorous chief guest for the January 26th Republic Day parade, but also a substantive set of agreements between two strategic powers across two ends of the globe.
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