Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News ServiceNew Delhi, September 28
India is not worried on whether the India-US Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Bill will be passed by the Senate or not, but its immediate concern is when will the voting take place.
The buzz word in South Block is that “Miracles can happen”. Miracles have indeed happened in Indo-US relations of late, the biggest example being the July 18, 2005 Indo-US Joint Statement which declared the two countries intent to sign the nuclear deal -- something which no two countries in the world have ever done before.
This correspondent understands that as of this evening, technically there were only two possibilities: either the Senate voting takes place in the next 48 hours or it gets deferred to the second week of November when the Senate meets on November 13 after the elections.
“Our victory is not in doubt. The only point of worry is that it involves time slippage if the voting does not take place in the next 48 hours,” a pivotal official in nuclear deal negotiations told this correspondent.
There is reason for this optimism. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Bill when it passed it 359-68, meaning approval of the 75 per cent of the 435-member House.
Though the Senate normally does not sit on Saturdays, it may meet on Saturday if decks are prepared. So far, the Bill has not been procedurally cleared because of lack of unanimity in the 100-member Senate.
India’s best bet will be if the Senate, despite dramatic bottlenecks that appeared in past couple of days, were to vote for it tomorrow or day after. Hopes of this are slim, but as said before, the catch phrase in the South Block is that miracles are known to have happened in Indo-US relations before too and there is no reason to believe that miracle cannot take place in the next 48 hours.
The next best chance for India, if the Senate were to miss the September 29-30 bus, will be the post-election sitting of the Senate in November. That is because though the election results would have come by then, it will be the old Senate only that will be meeting on November 13. The new house begins its sitting only in January next.
If the Bill does not come for voting even in November, then and then only alarm bells would start ringing as after the new house starts its sitting, the whole legislative process may have to start all over again with regard to the nuclear Bill.
The draft Bill has two Clauses -- number 106 and 107 -- which India is bitterly opposed to and this was conveyed in as many words when Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran had talks with his American counterpart Nicholas Burns in Washington earlier this week. These clauses relate to prohibition on nuclear transfers and the end use monitoring.
The Senate draft Bill has no clause pertaining to Iran.
