Cheney warns against N-deal breakers

NEW YORK: With just 50 working days before Congress adjourns to pursue 2006 midterm elections, US Vice President Dick Cheney used a key business meeting in Washington to caution lawmakers against asking for too many amendments to the existing nuclear agreement which would stall it.

 

Cheney urged lawmakers not to let the agreement languish in committee saying any delay in the existing bill’s approval would risk wasting critical opportunity to clinch the “strategically important” deal. “Given this agreement’s strategic importance, we must be sure that amendments or delays on the US side do not risk wasting this critical opportunity,” Cheney said.

 

Cheney said the administration was not averse to the Congress adding “its own ideas to the bill”, but it has signaled clearly that it would favour a majority “straight up and down vote in the Congress at the end of the process” on the nuclear deal.

 

“And as the discussion proceeds, President Bush and I are confident that this agreement will receive the strong bipartisan support it deserves,” said Cheney hinting that the deal had picked up tentative support from Democrat and Republican leaders.

 

According to William S Cohen, former defence secretary and US senator from Maine time is running out. “If not enacted before the congressional summer recess, the chances for ultimate passage will decrease precipitously. The 2006 midterm elections promise to be some of the closest and most partisan on record. In such an atmosphere, prospects for getting Congress to concentrate on this needed legislation, even after elections, are dim indeed.” The Senate foreign relations committee is expected to review an original bill on the India-US nuclear deal on June 28.