From rxpgnews.com
Brazil 'positive' about nuclear energy ties with India
By IANS,
Apr 13, 2007 - 4:16:09 PM
New Delhi, April 13 - Brazil, a member of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, Friday indicated that there are 'good prospects' of civil nuclear cooperation with India and underlined that the G4 initiative is 'advancing' towards its goal of expansion of the UN Security Council.
'We are looking at positive and pragmatic steps in this direction. There are good prospects for civilian nuclear cooperation within the International Atomic Energy Agency - safeguards,' Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, currently on a visit to India, said at a joint press interaction with Minister of State of External Affairs Anand Sharma.
'We will be sending a delegation of energy experts to India soon for this purpose,' he said after the third meeting of the India-Brazil joint commission that ended here Friday.
Amorim is in India on a five-day visit to prepare the agenda for the visit of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in June.
Last year, during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Brasilia for the IBSA - summit, Brazil had lent its support for 'forward looking approaches to enhance international civilian nuclear cooperation'.
Besides nuclear energy, Brazil and India are also cooperating in the crucial area of bio-fuels and have agreed to set up an international market for ethanol fuel.
Belying sceptics' assertions, India and Brazil have fleshed out an action plan to push the G4 initiative that also includes Japan and Germany and said they were 'confident' that the expansion of the Security Council would become real in the not too distant future.
'I see the process advancing. We are now in the negotiating phase,' Amorim said, underlining that it was difficult to bring about a change in the power structure of the global body in a day.
'Brazil and India are steadfast in their commitment to bring about reforms in the UN and expansion of the UN Security Council,' said Sharma after co-chairing the meeting of the joint commission with Amorim.
The Brazilian minister also called on Manmohan Singh and discussed with him an entire array of bilateral and global issues, including the UN reforms and multilateral WTO trade negotiations and the IBSA grouping.
'We are in complete agreement to take steps to ensure that the Security Council reflects contemporary realities,' Sharma said while stressing that the G4 has been proactively engaging the 53-nation African Union on this issue.
'We do hope that the African Union will be able to reach a consensus on this soon. We can't put a time cap to it, but we will surely succeed in it,' he stressed.
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