As the United States Congress reconvenes this week from its Easter recess, any hopes by the Bush Administration and the pro-India lobby in Washington that lawmakers would fast track the India-US civilian nuclear energy agreement may prove to be wishful thinking.
The slowdown may be in part largely due to a controversy that has cropped up over the proposed US text of the new bilateral cooperation accord that warns all bets would be off if India were to detonate a nuclear device.
Coverage: The Indo-US nuclear tango
After the text was leaked in New Delhi, India rejected this provision known as 'the 123 Agreement' that was given to Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran when he visited Washington last month.
External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna when asked about this provision, said on April 17 that 'in preliminary discussions on these elements, India has already conveyed to the US that such a provision has no place in the proposed bilateral agreement and that India is bound only by what is contained in the July 18 Joint Statement, that is, continuing its commitment to a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.'
'The US had shared with India some weeks ago a preliminary draft agreement on Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation under Article 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act,' he said.
The reason the hold-up in concluding this bilateral agreement becomes a stumbling block is because many lawmakers have said they would like to first take a look at this as well as the safeguards agreement that India negotiates with the International Atomic Energy Agency on 14 of the 22 nuclear reactors that it has listed as civilian.
Coverage: President Bush in India
Administration sources have complained that India is yet to get back to the US with its draft agreement so that both sides could reach a compromise on an accord which seemingly was a formality a few months ago but now has the making of, if not a stumbling block, clearly a delaying mechanism.
Compounding the hiccups on tap, Congressional and diplomatic sources told Rediff India Abroad that Congressman Henry Hyde, Illinois Republican, who chairs the House International Relations Committee, was definitely going to introduce his own independent piece of legislation with a surfeit of conditions, which could very well scuttle the deal.
However, diplomatic sources cognisant that the 82-year-old Hyde -- who retires in November, and hence has no obligation to appease the President could play spoiler, told Rediff India Abroad that "we've sent this message right to the top" in that the President himself would have to personally intervene "and will have to speak to Chairman Hyde."
The sources said that things seem more optimistic on the Senate side, where the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has scheduled another hearing on April 26 with private witnesses both pro- and anti-deal, and also those on the fence would most likely mark the legislation after this hearing and send it to the full Senate for a vote.
"But it's in the House where the problems are going to arise, and with Chairman Hyde bent on introducing his own bill, it's going to cause all kinds of complications, that could put off a vote for months," one source acknowledged.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, in an interaction with the media on April 20, said the administration was still hopeful that the legislation could be voted on in the next couple of months. 'All I can tell you is that we are still hopeful that it will happen not just this (calendar) year, but within the next few months.'
But Boucher acknowledged that 'the Congress however, sets its own schedules, so I can't make any promises to anybody. We don't tell them what to do. They decide on their own when they'll do it.'
Congressional sources on the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Rediff India Abroad that the administration and India should first get their act together and conclude the 123 Agreement and New Delhi negotiate its safeguards with the IAEA, without pushing the lawmakers into action on the legislation.
Boucher said that 'we have told our Congress we will keep them informed as best as we can not only of discussions we have with India on the bilateral side, but also the progress India makes with the IAEA.'
Boucher also declared that as far as the US is concerned, India's public moratorium on further nuclear weapons testing is the lynchpin of the US-India civilian nuclear agreement.
He said, 'We all understand that India has a moratorium on nuclear testing and has made a public commitment itself, based on its own decision to continue that moratorium.'
'That's very important to us and others who look forward to cooperating with India in the area of civilian nuclear power and we look for that to continue and that's one of the basis on which we are establishing the new cooperation.'
He added, 'So it's not surprising to find that encoded in various formats in documents we write and statements we make. But it was India's decision to do that just as the major nuclear powers themselves have decided not to test.'
Asked if there was any pressure by the US to cajole India into making that commitment contained in the US text of the bilateral agreement, now rejected by India in the wake of the leak of the document, Boucher reiterated that 'you see that in the draft law (introduced in Congress) and elsewhere, the fact that the Indian decision to have a moratorium on nuclear testing is one of the basis on which we can undertake this civilian nuclear cooperation.'
Boucher was circumspect when asked by Rediff India Abroad if the bilateral agreement could start unraveling in the wake of this new hiccup, said, 'We do think it's a fairly straight-forward process.'
'It's going to be something that we have to negotiate, we have to discuss. We are not going to discuss it through the press or in public. We are not going to start posturing based on positions ascribed to us or pieces of paper that may have been leaked,' he said, and added: 'We look forward to hearing from the Indian government and sitting down with them to negotiate.'
However, he acknowledged, 'Obviously, we don't have the exact same position on the text. We have to talk about it, but that's a normal part of diplomatic life. We look forward to doing it. So I don't see it as overly complicated, although it's important that when we ask our Senators and Congressmen to vote on this civilian nuclear arrangement, that they understand not just sort of the overall picture .but they also understand what some of the other pieces are.'
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission, who was in Washington, DC last week to push for the quick approval of the legislation by Congress, said he couldn't understand why Congress needs to review the safeguards arrangements worked out between India and the IAEA first.
'Obviously, whatever safeguards are going to be there are going to be IAEA agreed safeguards. So if the Congress passes something which is conditional on those safeguards, why is it necessary to wait for the IAEA or just to make it a conditional thing is not very clear to me,' he said.
Senior administration and diplomatic sources echoed this contention, noting that the draft legislation of the administration introduced in both the House and the Senate lays out presidential determinations including IAEA safeguards before the deal can be implemented.