ItÂ’s time to approve the India nuclear deal.
By William R. Hawkins
On March 2, while the President Bush was visiting New Delhi, he and Prime Minister Singh signed an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation. The agreement requires congressional action to implement, however, and little has been done to move this process forward. Later today, the House International Relations Committee is scheduled to mark up H.R. 4974, a bill to authorize the president to waive the application of certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 with respect to India, but floor action in the House and favorable actions of any kind in the Senate are a question mark.
On June 22, Vice President Dick Cheney tried to get the ball rolling with a speech to the U.S.-India Business Council in which he called the agreement “one of the most important strategic foreign-policy initiatives of our government.” He stressed that “Today there is a new strategic partnership between our countries — a partnership based on democratic values, common interests, strong commercial ties and a climate of trust and good faith between our governments.”
Yet, in an interview with the London Financial Times earlier in the week, Sen. John McCain said that Congress would probably not act on the measure this year because of the need to “scrutinize the deal rigorously.” Critics fear that lifting restrictions on nuclear cooperation with India, a country that has developed nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would set a bad precedent at a time when the United States is trying to rally international opinion against the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
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