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Congress Gets Legislation for Indian Nuclear Deal
The chairmen of the U.S. Senate and House Foreign Relations committees yesterday submitted legislation that would amend U.S. law to allow the Bush administration’s planned nuclear sharing agreement with India, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Mach 16). White House officials said they expect long negotiations with Congress over the deal, but they want lawmakers to begin work. “This is round one of a 15-round match,” said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. The legislation submitted yesterday would exempt India from components of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act that place restrictions on trade done with countries that are not signatories to nuclear treaties. India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which makes it currently ineligible to receive U.S. nuclear technology (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, March 17). Lawmakers have told White House officials that they want to revise the agreement, the New York Times reported today. Administration officials said changes would torpedo the deal. “This is a complex agreement, and if we were to reopen it, we would never be able to reassemble it again,” Burns said. The chairmen who introduced the legislation did so as a favor to the president rather than as a clear sign of support for the deal, the Times reported. House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in a press release placed the words “at the request” of the White House in capital letters. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) was noncommittal, saying that he anticipated Congress “fulfilling our constitutional role in this important matter” (Joel Brinkley, New York Times, March 17). Meanwhile, Pakistan said the agreement would lead to the collapse of international nonproliferation treaties, the Financial Times reported. “The whole Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty will unravel. It’s only a matter of time before other countries will act in the same way,” Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said yesterday. “Nuclear weapons are the currency of power and many countries would like to use it. Once this goes through the NPT will be finished. It’s not just Iran and North Korea. Brazil, Argentina and Pakistan will all think differently,” he added (Johnson/Bokhari, Financial Times, March 16).
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