First vote won hands down, nuclear deal gathers new momentum up Capitol Hill

After nearly 10 months of intense debate and many hearings, 37 members, accounting to more than two thirds of the 50-strong House International Relations Committee voted in favour of the legislation.

Only five members voted against.

Even some members who pushed deal-breaking amendments in the end voted for the bill. Despite the differences on the nature of the nuclear deal, they did not want to be seen as acting against India.

To be sure, the congenital pessimists of the Indian establishment, who never take “yes” for an answer, will worry about the ungainly clothes in which the Congress has dressed up the nuclear legislation.

Extracting its pound of flesh for agreeing to change three-decade old US nuclear laws in favour of India, the House Committee has added a long list of demands to the Bill submitted by the Administration a few months ago.

These include calls on the Administration to secure Indian support to prevent Iranian proliferation and ensure imported uranium fuel will not assist India’s nuclear weapon programme.

While the Congressional references to Iran might irritate India, New Delhi would be pleased at the identification of new criteria which preclude nuclear cooperation with Pakistan.

One amendment approved in the House consideration last night insists that the change of nuclear rules in the 45-nation nuclear suppliers group should apply only to India and not for any other nation. In the Congress, you win some and lose some.

The broad propositions on nuclear proliferation in the bill which reflect the general sentiment in the US Congress are not binding on either the Bush Administration or the Indian government.

India will be bound only by those obligations it negotiates with the Bush Administration in the bilateral framework for nuclear cooperation, often called the 123 agreement named after a section of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

In a great American political tradition, any bill moved by the Administration ends up like a Christmas tree at the end of a Congressional scrutiny. Different members tie in their own favourite political decorations—good, bad and ugly—to the tree.

For those in India familiar with coalition politics and the drafting of common minimum programmes, this should not come as a surprise. By the time it was presented for mark-up today, the House Committee had tweaked a simple three-page bill submitted by the Administration last March into nearly 24 pages.

The trick for all Administrations is to ward off changes to the essence of the bill while playing along with the Congress in its ringing but non-binding affirmations.

By taking on board many of the Congressional concerns and allowing them to be placed in the non-binding sections of the bill, the Administration succeeded in building a broad consensus in favour of the legislation. The language on preventing Iranian proliferation was critical in winning support from crucial sections of the Democratic Party and generating bipartisan endorsement of the Bush Administration’s nuclear deal with India.

In any case, India has rightly claimed to be a responsible nuclear power that is opposed to nuclear proliferation anywhere. And its vote with the international community twice at the IAEA in recent months has been critical in cementing a Congressional consensus in favour of nuclear cooperation.

If international politics operates on the basis of self-interest, few in India would argue that New Delhi abandon its long quest for nuclear energy for the sake of Iran. After all, Tehran has often differed with India on many nuclear issues and has demanded the universalisation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which New Delhi will never join. The language in the legislation on monitoring India’s nuclear material and weapon production would surely offend many in the establishment here. That provision, however, already exists in Section 601 of the U.S. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978.

There is no reason for India, which is now a declared nuclear weapon power, to be shocked at the suggestion that other great powers will continually assess the state of New Delhi’s nuclear arsenal.

Amendments Killed

• Unilateral moratorium on production of fissile missile or nuclear weapons. Defeated 32-13.

• No nuclear co-operation with India unless it signed a treaty prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Defeated 31-12.

• India should sign NPT. Defeated 36-4

• Annual presidential certification about amount of domestic uranium used in India’s military program. Defeated 32-10

And those approved

• Won’t encourage or promote India manufacturing nuclear weapons.

• Doesn’t permit civil nuclear co-operation with other non-nuclear weapon states that do not have IAEA safeguards.

• President will submit within a year report describing any new nuclear reactors India has designated civilian or military.

• President will submit a report on disposal of spent n-fuel from India’s civilian nuclear program