Indo-US N-deal: Senators slam Bush administration

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration has come under fire from US senators who have accused it of not being transparent with them on the landmark Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

They also accused the Bush administration for having "reneged" on a promise to share drafts of the agreement, however, they cautioned that the pact should not be tinkered with at this stage.

The Bush administration paid "little attention to our concerns" as it negotiated with India the separation plan and that it submitted a legislative proposal to the Senate and a decision proposal to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. "That (the plan) was poorly drafted as to cast doubt on the administration's seriousness of purpose," Democrat Joseph Biden said at a hearing on the deal on Wednesday.

"The administration has done a lot more to lobby us than to work with us," Biden told the Chair. "I still think that a new deal for India makes sense. But it isn't a slam dunk, as they say," Biden said.

At the start of the hearing, the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar, Republican from Indiana, stressed that while his Committee is cognizant of how valuable a closer relationship with India could be for the administration, law makers must examine "the implications and risks" of initiating a cooperative nuclear relationship with India.

"All parties involved in the negotiations, including the Bush administration, should facilitate the maximum amount of transparency possible so that the Congress is better equipped to make informed judgements," Lugar said.

Lugar said he himself had submitted to the administration 90 questions - apart from 82 questions that had already been answered-following an extensive April 5 Congressional testimony on the deal by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"We appreciate the administration's attention to these questions as the committee carefully works through the intricacies of the nuclear agreement," he said.

Until the administration answered lawmakers' questions and provided them details on the deal, "we simply should not act on its proposed legislation," Biden said.

Eight other specialists from the non-governmental sector, including Stephen Cohen of the Brooking Institution and Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment, came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to give their views on the civilian nuclear deal.
While some of the experts on the subject were clear in that the deal should go through, others expressed reservations or flat out called on Congress to reject the initiative on a number of fronts, including on non-proliferation concerns. But one over-riding theme was that the agreement should not tinkered with at this stage.

Former Defence Secretary William Perry, currently with the Hoover Institution, who played an active role in earlier administrations on issue of non-proliferation, supported the deal, saying US should back India in the development of nuclear power. He also cautioned the Senate against trying to modify what has now been agreed upon.

Cohen, who has earlier argued that the civil nuclear deal if properly implemented will advance and not retard American non-proliferation objectives said it was his judgement that this agreement need not trigger an arms race with Pakistan and neither did it give a green light to India to build a thousand or more nuclear weapons.

"It does provide the United States with an opportunity to work with India to prevent a broader nuclear arms race something that is not in the interest of India, Pakistan, China or America," the Brookings scholar remarked. To this effect he proposed three steps.

First, the agreement with India should eventually be folded into legislation that will develop criteria that would allow other states to enter such a nuclear "half way house" which would provide civilian nuclear assistance to those nations with an impeccable horizontal proliferation record.

Secondly the administration should take an initiative that comes to terms with vertical proliferation through a nuclear restraint regime in Asia that would include India, Pakistan and China.

And thirdly, Cohen argued that with the civilian nuclear agreement in place India should feel "less paranoid" about talking of its own nuclear capabilities.

"This agreement does much to repair the torn US-Indian strategic tie, it is important in reshaping and revitalizing India's massive energy shortfall and it has already been helpful in our attempt to constrain an Iranian programme, but this administration and its successor with Congress assistance should regard it as a beginning, not as an end as far as our non-proliferation and strategic interests are concerned," Cohen told lawmakers.