In a race against time, a buoyant Bush administration will try to push through the US Congress the nuclear deal with India after its ringing endorsement by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in Vienna.
A clear indication of the administration’s intent was given by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said the time was short and that she had talked to the heads of the committees of both the houses of Congress for pushing through the deal. “I have already talked before this NSG (meeting), several weeks before, to relevant committee chairs about trying to get it done, and I will have those conversations again, most likely on Monday or Tuesday, as well as trying to see whether the leadership believes that this can go forward,” Rice told reporters in Algiers, the capital of Algeria while on a visit there.
Rice, however said, the time was “very short”, adding: “We knew that in the summer, when the Indians were able finally to move this forward in their domestic process.”
“But I think we have demonstrated the commitment of the administration to this agreement, because we have worked this with the very, very strong help of partners through the IAEA and through the NSG in very rapid order,” she said.
With a formidable hurdle cleared in the nuclear cartel NSG, eyes are now on the US Congress, which begins a short session tomorrow, for ratification of the 123 civil nuclear cooperation agreement signed between President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005 before the end of Bush's term in mid-January.
Normally, 30 working days is the mandatory period required for a legislation to be passed in both the houses of the Congress but there are procedures for short-circuiting this period, a device that can be invoked by Bush so that he is in a position to ratify the 123 Agreement when Manmohan travels to Washington later this month.
For this, the initiative has to come from the administration. Such an initiative is widely expected from an administration that is clearly short on foreign policy achievements under Bush other than the Indo-US nuclear deal.