"We haven't given a plan on how India should separate its civilian and military (nuclear) facilities," a State Department official told PTI in response to reports that the Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns had in September presented Indian officials with a blueprint on how the Americans might go about in the exercise.
Indo-US nuclear deal a complicated process: Mulford
New Delhi is said to have given back the blueprint saying it was capable of going about on its own.
"But we recognise that this is something that is necessary as Burns said in his (Congressional) testimony - that the arrangement between India and the US involves a plan being devised by India on how they would be separating the civilian and military aspects of the nuclear programme which would then make it possible for us to work much more closely on the civilian side," the official said.
"We are having a lot of technical discussions with Indian officials and given their nature... we are not going to have much to say on that," the official remarked.
His comments came even as India asserted it would not accept any conditionality that limits its strategic nuclear programme and that the exercise of separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities would be its sole responsibility.
Official sources in New Delhi said India was considering whether it was in a position to share with the US some kind of a roadmap that may be prepared to take forward the bilateral nuclear deal.
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