WASHINGTON, March 17: Many members of the US Senate and House of Representatives have told Bush administration officials they want to rewrite parts of the nuclear deal President Bush made with India earlier this month.
On Friday, Capitol Hill, a little mound in the middle of Washington, was buzzing with activities as both pro and anti-deal groups resumed their efforts to win over lawmakers with a new zeal.
Although pro-India and anti-proliferation campaigners have been active since March 2, when President Bush signed the deal in New Delhi, they enhanced their activities after Thursday when the administration formally introduced a bill in the two houses of Congress, seeking their approval for the nuclear accord.
Leaders of the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees introduced bills to authorise the agreement, but the Republican chairmen said they did not necessarily support the legislation and introduced it only as a favour to the White House.
Rep Henry J. Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said he believed members of Congress ‘may seek conditions for its approval’. The news release from Mr Hyde’s office placed the words ‘at the request’ of the administration in capital letters to indicate his neutrality.
Under a plan made last July, the United States would help India build nuclear power plants, and India would allow regular international inspections of its civilian reactors. Its nuclear weapons program would remain secret.
President Bush has argued that the agreement is a boon for the environment and a way to cut US gas prices. “When India’s demand for fossil fuels goes up, it causes the price of our fossil fuels to go up,” he said. “And so, therefore, to encourage them to use a renewable source of energy that doesn’t create greenhouse gas, this makes a lot of sense.”
But Rep Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who has spearheaded a coalition to oppose the deal, disagreed. He noted that India currently produced a tiny fraction of its power from oil and that its clear aim was to sharply escalate its weapons production.
Mr Markey pointed to reports this week that Russia was considering reviving an old proposal to sell nuclear technology to India — a deal that the US once helped block — and that other nations such as China and Iran would follow suit.
“It’s a domino effect that will lead to the complete collapse of the nuclear proliferation regime that’s been protecting our planet for a generation,” he said.
Last week, David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector, concluded in a report that ‘onward proliferation’ of Indian nuclear material ‘is expected to become a serious problem’. India’s export ‘control system is poorly implemented’, Mr Albright said.
And on Friday, Robert J. Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation from 1999 to 2001, urged Congress not to approve the deal unconditionally.
Other critics say that the US-India nuclear agreement violates American law and the NSG practice because India has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
Concerns over proliferation and the continued secrecy of India’s nuclear weapons program leave many members of the Congress wary.
