The talks, described as a follow-up of the bilateral dialogue on aspects of civilian nuclear cooperation set in motion during the visit to India by French President Jacques Chirac in January this year, will be exploratory in nature, sources here said.

While Russia justified its decision to go ahead with the agreement on setting up two 1000 MW nuclear power reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu on the grounds that its deal with India pre-dated Moscow's commitments to the 1992 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) rules, for France there may be no such easy escape.

France's obligations under the NSG regime calls forfull-scope safeguards that is, international control on all nuclear facilities in the country to which it exports nuclear material or technology. India says it is ready to accept ``facility-specific'' safeguards but not full-scope safeguards for its entire nuclear programme. This would make a deal with the French that much more difficult to negotiate.

But the push for exploring the energy market with a view to setting up nuclear power projects is coming from the French nuclear power industry. Faced with a near-saturation in the European market, and having lost considerable ground to their American rivals in China, French domestic power producers are keen on a headstart in the next potential biggest market, India. French power companies have stepped up pressure on the government to find a way out of its international commitments and the political hurdles that come in the way of a deal with India.

The issue was tentatively probed during the visits to Paris and New Delhi respectively by the Indian Scienceand Technology Minister Y K Alagh and his French counterpart Claude Allegre last year. It was explored further during Chirac's visit when both sides agreed to a continued in-depth dialogue on civilian nuclear cooperation. Since the Pokhran tests, the dialogue on nuclear-related cooperation has become more complicated.

In the babel of international voices denouncing India after the tests, France's was a lone Western voice insisting that India should not be condemned as it had not violated any legal treaty.