Senate gives waiver powers to Clinton

However, the amendment does not permit waivers for US Government sales of defence articles, design and construction services, and licences for export of US munitions list items.

Pat Roberts, the co-mover of the amendment, said. “it helpsAmerican businesses threatened with huge economic losses because of the mandatory sanctions.”

“This amendment is not meant to be a cure-all for the long-term problems posed by India and Pakistan’s nuclear testing and the resulting sanctions,” said chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-committee on Near East and South Asia, Sam Brownback, who attached it to the agriculture appropriations bill yesterday. Brownback is another author of the Senate bill. Brownback, who visited India and Pakistan early this month, referred to provistions still on the sanctions list, such as those disallowing waivers on US sale of defence-related products, and said, “keeping these provisions on the sanctions list sends an important message to India and Pakistan.”

In discussions with the administration and in hearings which he had chaired in recent weeks, said Brownback, “the administration has sought some flexibility to deal with this issue". “I have received assurances from the administration that they do not planto ease sanctions unless India and Pakistan have achieved significant progress in meeting our non-proliferation objectives.

Earlier, the Senate had defeated an attempt to make future American sanctions more difficult and exclude food from the purview of the punitive measures. There was general agreement that sanctions as a tool of foreign policy could not be entirely abandoned but member after member voiced the view that at present there are too many sanctions imposed without giving much thought to consequences.

Senator Chuck Hagel said that since 1993, 65 sanctions have been imposed on 35 nations.

Other members said that with the addition of India and Pakistan, the total number of members under sanctions has reached 99 and the population targeted constitutes 42 percent of the world population. Most of the sanctions, he feared, are “unworkable, unjustifiable, outdated and irrelevant.”

The International Institute of Economics, he noted, has estimated that America’s unilateral sanctions have cost USbusiness $ 20 billion and 200,000 workers have lost their jobs. Other members said that other countries take away business when the US imposes unilateral sanctions.