Excerpts from Remarks on U.S.-India Relations

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Following are excerpts from Assistant Secretary Boucher's remarks with APTN during trip to New Delhi, India.

"The fundamental purpose of the Hyde Act is to allow us as a government to go off and conclude that arrangement that we have done with India and to finalise it. That's how we are operating - that's what we - American diplomats are operating on. The agreement between the United States and India is the 123 agreement. That's what binds India or what puts the United States and India within the same framework and that, that agreement is something that we both intend to carry out fully, in accordance with its own terms. But I don't frankly see a contradiction between the two."

"When you just sit down and look at the pieces that we need to get International Atomic Energy Agency approval (for), that takes a few weeks. We need to get Nuclear Suppliers' agreement approval, that takes a couple of months. We need to get the documents ready and up to our Congress, that can take a little while too and then we need to get.... give our Congress sufficient time to consider the, the final package, that takes a month or two as well. You start adding these things up and we are kind of playing in overtime right now. There is an awful lot of work to do and not a lot of time so, I think everybody understands that reality and as I said, as soon as the Indian government is ready to go ahead, we are too."

"Fundamentally, we believe this is a good agreement for non-proliferation. It brings India into, into harmony with international non-proliferation effort, and it adds to the overall non-proliferation effort in the world as well as being good for India, good for United States, good for all the countries that are involved in nuclear commerce, nuclear developments around the world. So I think in the end, everybody will find it beneficial, but I do recognise there are going to be a lot of questions asked and I think answered along the way."