US senators give July deadline for N-deal

In between acting as observers for elections in Pakistan and surveying the grim situation in war-torn Afghanistan, a group of US senators today made an unscheduled stopover at New Delhi to make a last ditch effort to salvage the Indo-US civil nuclear deal that, right now, is stuck due to opposition by the Left parties.

Two Democrat senators John Kerry and Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel from the ruling Republican party met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and told him that the deal was as good as dead unless it was operationalised by July.

While Biden is the chairman of the US Senate's Foreign Relation Committee, the other two are members of this influential body that had played a key role in the passage of the agreement in the US Upper House.

Kerry, who had contested the last election against President George Bush, in particular, is a vocal supporter of Indo-US relations.

Briefing the media about their meeting with the PM, Biden said they made it clear that unless New Delhi finished its "job with the IAEA and the NSG preferably by June and at the most by July, it would be very difficult for us to have the deal operationalised in view of the burden of the coming elections on us.''

Biden said the PM was a "straightforward person" who was heavily committed to the deal. He quoted the prime minister as telling them that he was still optimistic of pulling through the deal and "it was not over with him as yet''.

"Wisely, we did not ask him specifics of how he was going to do it,'' Bidan said. He said the US Senate would go for its recess in August and the later part of its sitting would be devoted to clearing the last-minute urgent business of the Bush regime before the elections.

Later Kerry, Biden and Hagel also met National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and had a luncheon meeting with a group of Members of Parliament, whose names they did not disclose. They said the main discussion with the Indians was about the nuclear deal, besides the situation in Pakistan.

Sources said theirs was unscheduled visit as the Senators had primarily come to monitor the elections in Pakistan and were scheduled to fly to Kabul to oversee the situation in the country.

"We did not want to leave India out in out visit,'' Kerry said. The US senators flew in this morning and had left by afternoon for Kabul.

Biden and his colleagues mainly told the Indian leaders that the blocking of the deal was embarrassment for all those who had overwhelmingly supported the deal.

Also, they wondered why while American detractors of the deal were alleging that it gave away too much to India, the Indian opposition did not see the deal as beneficial to their interests.

Kerry said although the failure of the Indo-US nuclear deal would not affect the growing relations between the two countries, ``it would indirectly do so.'' He also warned that the next deal would be a different one, apparently not as helpful for India as the present one was.