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Some key United States lawmakers, belonging to the powerful Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees have remained circumspect and eschewed being pinned down by Indian American community activists to unambiguous endorsements of legislation designed to ensure the passage of the US-India civilian nuclear agreement.
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At a Congressional reception hosted by a coalition of Indian American groups on Capitol Hill House on Monday, these lawmakers, including the likes of the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware and Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts, though declining to commit themselves to co-sponsoring the legislation, have nonetheless given every indication that if it comes down to an up or down vote, they would vote yes.
Minority Whip Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who kicked off this circumspection, refused to immediately put his name down as a co-sponsor of the legislation to facilitate the nuclear deal saying, "It goes without saying that this agreement is complicated."
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"It is complicated by the history of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, it is complicated by the fact that we have gone some period of time in discussing the relations and their regimes as to what is between non-nuclear nations and the nuclear nations."
"We will have to work our way through this," Hoyer said, noting, "As you know President Carter and (former Senator and erstwhile chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) Sam Nunn and others have expressed reservations and indeed concerns about this agreement -- the precedents that it sets and the impact that it will have on the non-proliferation regime."
"On the other hand," he acknowledged, "the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El Baradei, has made positive comments about this agreement as it would facilitate inspection on non-military nuclear facilities in India, which, to this date, has not occurred."
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"I come here not to say what I think is going to happen or what I am going to do, very frankly. What I do come here to say is that this important agreement is about to be considered very seriously by Congress and if we can see our way to facilitate this consistent with our policies, then it is useful to do so," Hoyer said.
Biden, who delivered the keynote address, said in the same vein that getting this agreement through was going to be difficult.
"This new nuclear deal, in my view, makes a lot of sense," the lawmaker said, however arguing that the agreement 'as presented by the Administration to Congress and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, was obviously at this point very weak on details.'
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"We have worked very hard with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and the chief US negotiator Nicholas Burns and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has spent time with me and the President. But we do not have all the details," he said.
Consequently, Biden predicted: "You are going to find Congress taking some time to flesh out these details. But the odds, in my view, are that the Congress will not attempt to add anything that will in fact, make it impossible for India to be able to go forward with this deal."
He said, "We will codify the laws, some of the basic US policies on nuclear cooperation like requirements of each country not to repeal its safeguards agreements. I think you will see that."
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"You will see us making it clear that the Indian nuclear equipment and technology must not be diverted to military uses or resold without permission. And, I think none of this will shock India and none of this will change the negotiated agreement," Biden added.
He said that in his recent conversations with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, he got the impression that he was quite frankly expecting that we will do that.
But Biden reiterated that the process may be a little slow than has been anticipated, because India still has to negotiate three other agreements -- the nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, and an additional protocol with the IAEA.
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"One of the things that are important here if you look at the detailed agreement, this is one of the few agreements America has negotiated where it has really taken a lot on faith because there are not many requirements. It is a big, big deal for India in terms of its recognition -- de facto recognition -- as a nuclear state and being given the opportunity to be taken out from uranium sanctions and being able to generate a significant new civilian nuclear energy program. That is a big deal," Biden observed.
However, Biden added: "In return, the United States does not get much. What it gets, and it underlies it all, is the assumption that there is a desire on the part of the Indian government to have a fundamentally new relationship with the United States -- a relationship that will hopefully, in my view, develop into a relationship not dissimilar to the one we have with many of our European allies."
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He however, asserted that he strongly believed the legislation will go forward because the agreement was much more than the sum of its parts; it was much more than the sum of the language. It marked a watershed period in US-Indian relations.
Biden suggested that New Delhi demonstrate by actions while this was being negotiated, their intentions relating to this being a purely civil gain -- not a military gain.'
"This agreement has to have, for what we all hope for, legs. It has to live beyond the political goodwill of the two occupants of the offices in India and the US. And, in order to do that, it will be critical that India, not in fact, not do anything in the near-term that allows the rest of the world or as some in this country have said, that this was all about modernizing their nuclear arsenal -- that this was all about increasing their nuclear capacity," he noted.
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He emphasized that it was important for India to voluntarily -- not imposed by US -- to demonstrate that it was the opposite. If in a year from now, we find out that new access to uranium has allowed the diversion of existing uranium to significantly increase the nuclear capability of India in terms of weaponry, it will do such irreparable harm to the relationship that both the countries will be hurt very badly. It will be the end of this kind of cooperation."
Biden reiterated that this was an agreement that was good for good reasons. The most important reason was to solidify a strategic relationship with a nation whose future will impact upon the future of Americans positively, potentially more than any other nation in the world.
"But let us take this thing through nice and gentle, and steady and slow. This deal is important it is important to be done right because, as I said, the future of both our countries depends upon the mutual relationship in ways that I do not think could be exaggerated," he implored.
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Florida Republican Ros-Lehtinen, who much to the chagrin of the Indian American community and the pro-India lobby is yet to endorse the deal, however, disclosed that House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, has said that he looked forward to bringing the bill up for debate on the floor and was looking forward to passage of this nuclear deal.
She said: "It is a win situation for the US because when you juxtapose that India is doing with what Iran is doing -- Iran is saying we do not want the IAEA inspectors to come to our country -- what India is saying is bring them on. Come on in bring the inspectors in here let us make sure that we got the safest facilities that we can."
Ros-Lehtinen said, "We should congratulate countries that want to be part of our efforts to making sure that we have nuclear power with safe democracies and stable governments like the one in India."
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Kerry spent almost three-quarters of his speech in a virtual campaign stump, giving rise to rumors that he is readying for another Presidential run in 2008. He kept slamming the Bush Administration for everything from the quagmire in Iraq to America's unpopularity in the world and for domestic policies that have sent the deficit soaring well past the trillion-dollar mark.
It was at the tail-end of his remarks that he noted: "When I was in India, I had announced that I was supportive of this agreement and no one else had even known exactly what the details were going to be."
But Kerry said that after his meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and several other senior Indian government officials, he was convinced for a lot of obvious reasons of the benefits of US trying to move forward, even as it tried to strengthen, what he hoped it can strengthen in terms on the non-proliferation protocols.
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Buttonholed by rediff.com after his remarks and asked why he still had not signed on as a co-sponsor of the legislation circulating in the Senate or gotten on the Senate floor and endorsed the deal, Kerry kept repeating, "I just said I am supportive of it I said I am fundamentally in favor of it."
"Why it has not moved through the process yet was because there were some lawmakers who were still having reservations and concerns overall about the non-proliferation impact and they are trying to work out how to make certain that it does not make things more complicated with some other countries," he said.
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"But I think they are working on that. I know that Secretary Burns is working on that," he said, however reiterating that some of his colleagues believed that it created an issue with other countries that signed an agreement that do not get this kind of assistance.
"In principle, it is going to pass. I think it is a good agreement between us. It moves our strategic relationship forward and I think on balance It is positive, and I have said this from day one," Kerry predicted.