NEW DELHI: The Indo-US civilian nuclear energy deal is not likely to come up for a vote before the US Senate breaks for the Congressional elections at the end of this week. US legislators have remained immune to hectic lobbying by New Delhi, which sent foreign secretary Shyam Saran specifically for this purpose, and have given no indication that they are willing to consider the legislation at this stage.
A late vote in the week is not going to solve the problem either as the bill will now have to be discussed with certain amendments that allow the Indian reservations to be accommodated in the Senate bill. Sources said that if this was not done at this stage, then the final reconciliation committee that is expected to work out a final legislation will find it difficult to drop the provisions offending India as these would be common to both the bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Agencies have reported the director of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Centre, Mr Henry Sokolski, as saying in Washington that “for this week, the Indian deal is number 58 on the top 10 list”. Republican legislators, agency reports suggest, are more interested in making progress on issues of national security as these will impact directly on their elections next month. Besides, the US legislators have acknowledged that the nuclear deal was not simple and should not be voted upon in haste.
The nuclear deal has a long journey ahead before it can reach the US President for final assent, and if it is not put to a vote within this week it will pass to the lame duck session of the US Congress in November. Sources said that it could technically be taken up at that stage and, if passed by the US Senate, go to the reconciliation committee for a quick scrutiny before the term of the 109th Congress comes to a final end. But, as the sources pointed out, this would be a difficult process as the elections would have been held and the new American legislators would be breathing “hard down the necks of the outgoing Congressmen”. The chances of getting the deal through in November were, thus, slim.
The bill, if it does not get through by November, will have to be revived by a fresh decision of the new Congress when it meets in January next year. This will push it back to the committee stage in what will be a fresh move and a fresh legislation. The delay by the Senate has made time a crucial factor now, particularly as both the Manmohan Singh government and the Bush administration had been earlier optimistic of an early vote. Mr Shyam Saran and US official Nicholas Burns spent long hours re-discussing the provisions of the bill but were clearly unable to push the bill ahead of other business in the queue.
The non-proliferation lobby in the US, which has been closely monitoring the progress of the legislation, had shot off a letter to the Senators earlier this month urging them to determine that India has stopped the production of fissile material for weapons; that civil nuclear trade with the US does not in any way assist or encourage India’s nuclear weapons programme; that the US does not continue to provide nuclear assistance directly or through other nuclear suppliers in case India breaks the non-proliferation commitments; and that the government of India or affiliated entities are not engaged in illicit procurement of WMD-related items.
The letter makes it clear that unless these provisions are included in the bill, the legislation will have “far reaching and adverse implications for US non-proliferation and international objectives”. It has further stated that while a strong India-US partnership was an important goal, it should be pursued without undermining US leadership efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. The Indian Parliament, on the other hand, compelled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to state for the record that if the final legislation was seen to have moved beyond the provisions of the agreement he had reached with US President George W. Bush, it would not be acceptable to India.—By arrangement with The Asianage
