N-deal vote unlikely this week

At present concentration of both the Republican and the Democratic leadership is on “reaching an agreement” on the nature of debate in the Senate over the nuclear deal issue in terms of how many hours can be devoted for discussion and how many amendments could be considered. It is believed that the agreement in this regard would be reached before they leave this weekend.

While the Majority Republicans favour the Bill be given six hours for debate with only first-degree amendments, the minority Democrats differ and seek an entire day, besides a debate on the second-degree amendments.

“My understanding is that the two (political parties) are expected to reach an agreement before they go on recess this weekend,” congressional sources said.

While backroom negotiations has intensified in the past few days among the leadership of both the political parties, the “unexpected delay”, is said to be a setback to the nuke deal as both the Bush Administration and the Indian Government were “trying hard” to get it through before the end of this month.

Before leaving for New Delhi, Defense Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told The Indian Express, he had urged the Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, in his meeting to ensure that the Bill is passed by the Senate by the end of this month. A similar request was made by the Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, in his meeting with the Assistant Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns, last week.

However, the Bush Administration has not given up as this is a key foreign policy issue for them. As such senior administration officials are still working on the issue with key Republicans and Democrats to try get the Bill approved in the last few days of this session of the Senate.

They are still hopeful because Saturday “ an unusual thing “ has been reserved tentatively as a working day for the Senate.