Mumbai: Neotiators of India and International Atomic Energy Agency will hold the next round of talks on the India-specific safeguards from January 16. India and IAEA, which have failed to reach a final agreed text in the third round, will have further consultations from next Wednesday to enable the "forward movement" of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, according to Department of Atomic Energy sources.

Since last week s talks were orignially considered to be a final round to prepare the agreed draft text which could not be completed, particularly on the issue of India's right to hold its strategic reserve to cater to lifetime supply to its civilian nuclear plants, both India and IAEA will have one more meeting, the sources said.

There was also no meeting point on the issue of corrective measures to be undertaken in the event of stoppage of fuel to power plants, sources said. It was important that India and IAEA come to some kind of understanding in the next round of talks and finalise the text otherwise India would not be able to meet the deadline to clinch the civil nuclear deal.

Only when IAEA prepares a final agreed text which has to be cleared by its Board of Governors, the US could go ahead with its talks with the 45-member Nuclear Supplier's Group to get a clean and uncondtional exemption for India to do nuclear commerce internationally.

The talks, a follow up to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, are one of the pre-requisites for operationalisation of the deal first mooted in July 2005. It is expected that the text, drafted by the IAEA, would be brought back before the 15-member UPA-Left committee for deliberations after the next round of talks, sources said.

Source : PTI