India to brief IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Friday

Mumbai, Jul 17 (PTI) India will brief the IAEA board of
Governors on the safeguards agreement and other aspects of
Indo-U.S. nuclear deal Friday in Vienna ahead of the board's
scheduled meeting on August one to reach a consensus on giving
a waiver to India to do civilian nuclear trade.
"There is a briefing scheduled on Friday afternoon at a
location outside the IAEA. The invitation was distributed by
India to Board members," IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming
told PTI Wednesday night in an email message.
Foreign secretary Shivsankar Menon will lead the Indian
delegation to brief them the safeguard agreement reached
between India and IAEA. Other members of the delegation are
the chief negotiator of the safeguards agreement R. B. Grover,
who is also the Director, Strategic Planning of the department
of Atomic Energy and Indian Ambassador in Vienna Saurabh
Singh.
The IAEA spokesperson said earlier they were informed
that India has decided to cancel their briefing but later
clarified that India will hold the briefing outside IAEA.
Once BOG reach a consensus on the agreement, then it
will be taken up by NSG to give clean exemption for nuclear
trade and this meeting will possibly be held next month,
sources said.
After that is done, the Indo-U.S. deal will be placed
before the U.S. Congress for its approval in September before
the deal is actually operationalised, the sources added.
Out of the 35 BOG, 26 are NSG members and the remaining
NSG countries have also been invited for the briefing to seek
a waiver for India to do civil nuclear trade.
Earlier, on a request by the Indian ambassador in Vienna,
the IAEA secretariat informed its 144 member states that India
will hold a briefing on the draft safeguards agreement
distributed to the board members on July 7, Melissa said.
It will also deal on aspects of India's bilateral civil
nuclear co-operation agreements with the U.S., France and the
Russia, Melissa added.
However, India Wednesday said it has scaled down the
briefing as it was unnecessary to brief all the 144 members of
the IAEA.
The briefing is taking place just a few days before the
trust vote of the U.P.A. Government in the Lok Sabha on July
22.
The India-specific safeguard agreement draft was
initiated on July 7 and distributed to all board members by
the IAEA and was put up on the website of India's Ministry of
External Affairs on July 10.