India, Russia expected to sort out Kudankulam nuclear liability issue

New Delhi, Oct 15: India and Russia today seemed to have covered much ground on the vexatious issue of the proposed unit III and IV of the Kudankulam nuclear power project coming under the country’s nuclear liability law.
External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, after his talks with visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, said here that they discussed the issue and hoped that a mutually acceptable solution would be worked out.
“A techno-commercial agreement was being negotiated,” Krishna said, replying to a question at the joint media interaction after the talks.
He pointed out that a credit agreement had already been signed in July.
Ahead of today’s meeting of the 18th session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC), Mr Rogozin had yesterday said that the cost of the Kudankulam III and IV would go up if Russia has to bear the additional liabilities arising from a possible nuclear accident.
Russia had been told by India that the units III and IV of the power plant in Tamil Nadu will be covered under the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. Moscow had been maintaining that India should not apply the Nuclear Civil Liability Act on these units as the agreement on them took place before the law was enacted.
However, indications after today’s meeting were that the two countries were well on the road of sorting out the issues.
Krishna said energy security was going to play a very important role in sustaining the economic growth of India in which nuclear energy would play a vital role.
“We see great role of Russia in this task, both for supply of equipment and technology,” he said.
Rogozin sought to assure India about the safety of Kudankulam, saying they were the safest in the world, and Russia had a very rich experience from its nuclear energy programme and nuclear energy.
He said the first unit of Kudankulam was ready to be launched and the second unit would be launched during next year.
Rogozin also called for tapping the full potential of business and scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries. He said their goal was to take their bilateral trade to 20 billion dollars by 2015. Earlier, Mr Krishna in his opening remarks said the two countries agreed to make greater efforts to stimulate trade with a resolve to overcome any hindrances at the governmental level.
Krishna welcomed Russia’s formal membership of the World Trade Organisation and expressed the hope that this would result in greater trade and investment flows bilaterally.
The Minister informed Mr Rogozin of the measures taken recently to liberalise foreign direct investment norms in prospective sectors of retail, civil aviation, telecommunication and insurance.
He said India’s relations with the Russian were a key priority of its foreign policy.
“The Inter-Governmental Commission is the main mechanism that helps us comprehensively review our special and privileged strategic partnership. We recognised that even though there has been a significant increase in bilateral trade of 38 per cent in the first half of this year, our trade linkages have not kept pace with our cooperation in several strategic spheres,” said Mr Krishna.
He said the two countries also reviewed their robust collaboration in the field of Science & Technology and welcomed the operationalisation of the offices of the India-Russia Joint Technology Centres in our two countries.
During the Joint Commission meeting, the two countries also emphasised on strengthening contacts in the IT and hydrocarbons sector.
Krishna said today’s meeting also laid the groundwork for the forthcoming visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 13th India-Russia annual summit. (UNI)