N-deal down to the wire

[Spring Onion]

N-deal down to the wire

S Rajagopalan and Pramit Pal Chaudhuri

Washington/New Delhi, September 28, 2006

The good news: There is overwhelming support for the Indo-US civil nuclear deal in the US Senate. The bad news: This is why individual senators are tying their pet bills to the Senate vote on the nuclear deal.
Two such pet bills now lie between the nuclear deal being put to vote before the Senate goes into recess this weekend. One bill requires the US to allow more IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. The other bill requires that no Indian nuclear waste must be put in a depository in Nevada.
Partisan squabbling over both these bills has made it impossible to get the "unanimous consent proposal" that would allow the nuclear deal to get through this week. Under such a proposal, the senators would limit debate and the number of amendments to the nuclear deal to ensure a speedy vote.
The first pet bill is an old problem that has resurfaced. The original nuclear deal legislation had come with an unrelated bill on US compliance with the IAEA's Additional Protocol attached. Rightwing Republican opposition to the language of the attached bill had held up the Senate vote for much of the past month. A compromise reached a fortnight ago was reported to have broken down with Democratic Senator Joe Biden objecting to one of the clauses in the compromise language. Last minute negotiations were on for yet another compromise, said diplomatic sources.
The second pet bill is an amendment to the nuclear deal moved by Democratic Senator Harry Reid.
This would require that no civilian nuclear waste from India should be deposited in the Yucca Mountain Depository in Reid's state of Nevada.
This is also only tenuously linked to the nuclear deal and is really about a raging environmental debate in Nevada over the Yucca facility.
Ironically, Reid — who is Senate Minority Leader and the seniormost Democratic senator — has publicly said the Indo-US nuclear deal legislation is important and indicated he supports an early vote.
On Tuesday, his office claimed he had been among the first to call for a unanimous consent agreement. It blamed Senator Bill Frist —the Senate Majority Leader and seniormost Republican senator — for bringing 16 other bills to the Senate floor instead of putting the nuclear deal to an early vote.
Frist's office reacted saying, "That is absolutely ridiculous, considering that we could not even get a list of amendments that Senator Reid and the Democrats wanted to add to the US-India nuclear bill." Not providing such a list, said diplomatic sources, would delay any unanimous consent agreement.
Reid and Frist also disagree on the form of the unanimous consent vote with Reid holding out for a full day's debate and Frist wanting it restricted to only seven hours.
With the nuclear deal mired so deeply in domestic US politics, exacerbated by the fact midterm congressional elections will be held on November 7, Indian diplomats accept matters are largely out of their hands.
“At least both Republicans and Democrats insist they strongly support the Indo-US nuclear deal,” one of them said.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1808026,001301790001.htm

 

[Neo]

US Senate to take up nuke deal in lame duck session


Indo-Asian News Service

Washington, September 30, 2006


The Indo-US nuclear deal ended up as 'unfinished business' on the Senate plate as the House went into recess early on Saturday for the Congressional elections.

Despite a last minute push from the Bush administration, opposition Democrats declined to take up the enabling bill before adjourning, but agreed to consider it in a 'lame duck' session after the November 7 elections.

Majority and Minority leaders Bill Frist and Harry Reid had worked through Friday on a "package" on how to debate the bill that was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a 16-2 majority, but could not be taken up by the whole chamber in the face of objections from a few senators from both sides.

As the Senate raced through several other bills considered crucial by the White House, Minority leader Harry Reid promised to put the bill on "automatic pilot" so that it may be taken up as "the first order of business" after the break.

"I would hope we could take a limited number of amendments, very short-time agreements on these and have it set up so that, when we get back when the elections are over, this (bill) be the first order of business we move to. We could set it up so we could finish it in a very long day but we can do it in one day," said Reid.

Frist had on Thursday night reported to the Senate that the Democrats had declined to approve a managers' amendment to the bill worked out by Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Richard Lugar and its ranking Democrat Joseph Biden to ensure its quick passage.

If like members of his own party, the Democrats had agreed to pass it without further amendment or debate on Thursday night, it could be sent to conference over the recess to resolve their differences with the other house over the legislation, he said.

That way "we could be assured of sending this bill to the President before we adjourn," he said.

The House of Representatives had passed a different version of the enabling bill by an overwhelming 359-68 votes.

However, President George Bush cannot sign it into law until he gets an identical version of the legislation from both chambers.

The Democrats had instead chosen to offer a few "killer amendments" that would be unacceptable to the Indian government in terms of the July 18 agreement between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Reid, however, blamed the Republicans for the delay in bringing the bill to the Senate floor for debate and vote.

It was a couple of senators from their side who had put a hold on the bill because of "Title II" inserted by Lugar, he said Friday.

A few Republican senators had raised security concerns over Title II that has nothing to do with the nuclear deal as such, but requires US to sign an Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it has asked New Delhi to do as part of the deal.

The Bush administration has been pushing hard to get the legislation passed with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making "a rare personal telephone call" to Reid last Monday after her meeting with Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New York.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran too has had meetings with both Reid and Frist besides other key Congressional leaders and administration officials, including Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to push the legislation.
The enabling legislation would exempt India from the current-law prohibition on the transfer of nuclear materials and technology to countries that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1809895,001301790001.htm