N-deal: Democratic Senator lashes out at Republica

The Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid -- a former amateur middleweight boxer and boxing judge -- has come out swinging against charges by the Republican leadership. Reid is especially against the charges by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that he was obstructionist and this was the reason the enabling legislation to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear deal could not be brought to the Senate floor for a debate and vote before the Senate recessed September 30 for the November Congressional elections.

In an exclusive interview with rediff.com, Reid, who represents Nevada, said the allegations by Frist and the Indian American Republican Council that he and his fellow Democrats sabotaged the legislation from coming to the floor in order to deny President George W Bush a major foreign policy victory before the November elections was nothing but pure fiction.

He all but accused Frist of lying, saying, "They are looking for a scapegoat and I am always the scapegoat. But the fact is, this is clearly a diversion."

Reid pointed out that it was the Republicans who control the Senate and not the Democrats, and "the Majority Leader has the absolute right to move anything to the floor if he wants. We can't stop him from moving it to the floor. All he'd have to do is bring it up and if he didn't like the amendments we had, let him complain."

He recalled that "...the bill was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July. Till last Friday they (the Republican leadership) had 16 different measures that went to the Senate floor. We asked them time and again to bring this up but they wouldn't."

Reid said, "I realised late last week that the Republican leader had no intent of bringing this bill up for consideration, and that day and previous days, I went to the floor and said we want to take this bill up, we'll do it in a day, we'll offer a few short amendments, but they simply wouldn't bring it up."

Before the Senate recessed, Frist said the reason the Democrats "...are not prepared to pass the legislation is because they have a large number of amendments that they wish to offer. Some of these Democrats' amendments are so-called killer amendments, which if adopted will simply make this legislation unacceptable to the Indian government."

He said that while some other amendments offered by the Democrats "are not necessarily designed to kill the legislation," the "sheer volume will slow down this whole process considerably and could as a practical matter make it impossible for the Senate to consider this legislation this year."

But Reid said, "They kept moving the dice and finally the session ended."

He reiterated, "The Republicans control the Senate, and on any day from July to when we went out of session, any day, the Majority Leader could have put that on the floor."

"The only time he (Frist) said he wanted to move it is in the last day or two we were in session," Reid said.

But Reid said he is committed to take up the bill as soon as the Senate reconvenes on November 13 for the lame-duck session. "I told him (Frist) that I said so publicly on the Senate floor before millions of viewers that that should be the first thing we take up when we get back."

However, he said, "It's all up to the Republicans. I want it to be the first thing we do. It's all up to them, We are willing to do it. We've been willing to do it since July."