US-India nuclear deal closer to
fruition By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The Indo-US nuclear
deal cleared a major hurdle when the US Senate
approved the pact, with no crippling amendments,
with an overwhelming 85-12 vote. It had already
passed the House of Representatives. Assuming any
differences are reconciled in a House-Senate
conference, the deal will be much closer to
fruition.
While a new Congress was elected
last week, it won't take office until January. The
nuclear deal was approved in a short-term
"lame duck" session, convened
to address pressing issues until its term formally
expires. It was in this small window in which New
Delhi hoped the deal would get a final stamp of
approval. Republicans enjoy a majority in both
houses of the outgoing Congress.
Had the
legislation failed, it would have had to be
reintroduced in the new Congress, where the
Democrats will hold a majority in both houses.
Although the deal has bipartisan support, the
added Democratic members increased the chances
that amendments unpalatable to New Delhi might
have been enacted.
But the deal still must
receive critical approvals from the United
Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency and
the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). So it
may take many more months before India is able to
purchase, or US firms able to profit from sales
of, US nuclear fuel, reactors and related
technology.
President George W Bush, who
was in Singapore at the time, lauded the Senate
action within minutes of the passage. "The United
States and India enjoy a strategic partnership
based upon common values. Today, the Senate has
acted to further strengthen this relationship by
passing legislation that will deliver energy,
non-proliferation and trade benefits to the
citizens of two great democracies," Bush said.
A few hours before the vote, Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh spoke briefly to Bush by
telephone and conveyed that India hoped that the
nuclear bill in its final form (without the
"killer amendments") would be passed.
US
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman
Richard Lugar said, "This agreement is the most
important strategic diplomatic initiative
undertaken by President Bush. By concluding this
pact and the far-reaching set of cooperative
agreements that accompany it, the president has
embraced a long-term outlook."
Republican
and Democratic senators came together on a 73-26
vote to defeat decisively an amendment by Democrat
Jeff Bingaman that would have required the
president to determine that India committed to a
cap on its fissile-material production before
Washington could proceed with nuclear exports to
India.
The Senate also defeated the
amendments and "bargaining chips'' sought by
Senator Russ Feingold. The changes sought to rein
in considerably India's independent
nuclear-weapons program, which is completely
outside the purview of the agreement signed by
Bush and Manmohan.
Though New Delhi has
given a commitment that any nuclear technology
obtained from abroad will only be used for
civilian purposes and such nuclear reactors will
be open to inspection by international agencies,
it wants to refrain from opening its entire
nuclear program to scrutiny. New Delhi has
maintained that India's record as a responsible
democratic nation should be enough for the
international community to recognize it as a
nuclear exception.
More than US$100
billion of nuclear commerce is expected to be
generated worldwide.
One reason Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist did not succeed in
introducing the bill earlier in the session was
the large number of amendments to the original
agreement that the Democrats wanted. Despite
lobbying by India, especially after then-foreign
secretary Shyam Saran's visit to Washington in
September, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid cut
the amendments only from 18 to 17.
Indian
policymakers had feared that emboldened Democrats,
perhaps to slow down a Republican policy
initiative, would now be more insistent about the
changes. This could well shred the stout defense
of the pact as well as improved Indo-US ties of
the incumbent Congress party-led government headed
by Manmohan Singh.
In July, Manmohan
assured parliament that his government would never
compromise in a manner that was inconsistent with
the July 18 Indo-US joint statement on civilian
nuclear energy. "I have on more than one occasion
shared our government's views in parliament that
we will not compromise and that everything would
be transparent,'' he said.
Indeed, there
is reason that Manmohan called Bush before
Thursday's vote. According to officials, New Delhi
was not comfortable letting the volatile debate on
the nuclear issue slide too close to Indian
general elections scheduled for 2009. There is
still a long road ahead beyond the US Congress and
the NSG to get the nuclear exemptions in place.
Although there is a big constituency that
support's Manmohan's pro-US agenda, the Congress
party is averse to antagonizing chunks of the
Indian population, including Muslims and poorer
sections yet unaffected by liberal economic
policies, who continue to be virulent in their
anti-US views.
In such a situation, New
Delhi is keen to seal the deal as one of its
significant achievements without standing out as
the signature feature of its tenure. It would thus
ideally want the pact to be out of the limelight
as soon as possible, so as to highlight other
policy initiatives, including steps toward social
equity.
If the recent polls in the large
state of Uttar Pradesh are any indication, there
seems to be a coalescing of upper-caste voters
against the Congress party, which is being
interpreted as a vote against reserving seats for
lower-caste students in prestigious educational
institutions. Competitive and populist electoral
politics will begin to hold sway perhaps less than
a year from now.
While the left-wing
parties in the governing coalition have agreed not
to derail the nuclear pact in parliament, New
Delhi has promised that it will not be overly
strict on Chinese firms investing in India. Such
an arrangement will, however, unravel once the
elections approach and the Congress and leftist
parties have to fight it out on their own in the
electoral battlefield.
What New Delhi was
fretting about the most vis-a-vis the nuclear pact
was the time factor. Those fears are considerably
allayed now because of the favorable vote in the
US Senate.
Siddharth Srivastava
is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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