Moscow, December 06: Barring last-minute hitches, India and Russia are set to sign a new civil nuclear pact on Monday after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Summit talks with President Dmitry Medvedev which significantly will ensure uninterrupted uranium fuel supplies from Moscow in the event of termination of bilateral ties in this field for any reason.
The overarching framework for the nuclear cooperation between the two countries will be an addition to the three defence agreements which will be inked after Summit talks in Kremlin tomorrow.
The Indo-Russian pact on atomic cooperation is a significant document and goes much further than the 123 agreement between India and the US, sources said.
The agreement with Russia is considered by India as a major improvement over the 123 pact which provides for not just termination of ongoing cooperation but also for the return to the US of already supplied components and fuel in the event of the nuclear agreement being terminated.
The pact with Russia is marked by a forward-looking language in matters relating to reprocessing, nuclear equipments and transfer of technology, the sources said.
Singh, who arrived here on Sunday, will be holding talks with Medvedev at the Kremlin on a wide range of issues aimed at taking the strategic ties to new heights. He will also meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Ahead of the visit, Singh had said that Indo-Russia atomic cooperation is a key pillar in bilateral relations.
Fuel supply assurances will not seize under the Indo-Russian civil nuclear agreement if there is any end of cooperation unlike similar atomic pacts with the US and other countries, the sources said.
Although the two countries have a nuke pact, it is largely confined to the construction of nuclear sites in India.
Among other highlights of the proposed agreement are built-in reprocessing consent rights for all future Russian reactors supplied to India. At present, Russian consent has been separately detailed in the Kudankulam agreement.
The new pact also contains provisions that could allow transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology subject to certain conditions, sources said.
The two countries signed last year an agreement providing for setting up of four additional Russian nuclear plants in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and some other places whose venues were to be decided later.
That agreement was inked during Medvedev’s visit here last year.
Russia is already building two nuclear power units in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and is to build four more reactors there under an agreement signed during Medvedev’s visit. India has identified an additional site at Haripur in West Bengal for Russia to build another nuclear plant.
–Agencies