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Bush not to advise Senate on N-cooperation Bill
Don’t blame Pak without proof: USA
Iran moots new N- plan
Indian stabbed to death in Bahrain
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Bush not to advise Senate on N-cooperation Bill
The Bush administration is “hopeful” that the Senate will take up the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Bill for a vote when it returns for a lame duck session on November 13.
Tom Casey, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, said on Tuesday, “I will try and avoid trying to tell the Senate how it should proceed. Obviously, it is up to members of the Senate and leadership to determine when to bring matters to the floor.” Congressional sources are optimistic that the Senate will take up the Bill in November and, like the House of Representatives before it, vote strongly in favour of civilian nuclear cooperation with India. If the Senate passes the Bill it must then be reconciled with the House version in a process known as a conference. It is this step that analysts worry could prove contentious and time consuming and drag the debate into 2007. If the Senate does not vote on the Bill before the end of the year both Senate and House versions of the Bill will lapse and the process of debating new legislation will have to start from scratch in the 110th Congress in 2007. Not many analysts foresee the Senate putting off action on the Bill until the new year. The Bush administration has been working hard with members of Congress in an effort to see the deal through to fruition. Mr. Casey said, “we are certainly hopeful that they will take up this issue when they return to session I believe on November 13.” He added it was “an important agreement; it’s one that we feel provides real benefit for the USA, for India and for the broader international community in that it does strengthen non-proliferation regimes which are already in place.” Mr. Casey said the administration would continue to discuss with Senators as well as their key staffers the importance of passing the deal. “And we’ll certainly be doing everything we can to encourage them to do so,” he added. Senators - both Republicans and Democrats - have blamed each other for the delay in taking up the Bill. Congressman Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican and a former co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, said he was amazed by Democrat’s “If Democrats continue their obstructionist ways, the implementation of this agreement will be pushed to 2007,” Mr. Wilson said. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, on Saturday, the day Congress went on recess for the November 7 midterm elections, said Republicans were prepared to pass the nuclear legislation without amendment or debate, but the Democrats objected. “I am very disappointed that some Democratic members wish to defeat the Bill by adding a large amount of unnecessary amendments,” he said. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, meanwhile accused the Republicans of being “more interested in scoring political points than passing this important Bill.” The government of India’s lobbyist in Washington expressed the confidence the Bill would be approved this year. “We fully expect that the Senate Bill will pass during the lame duck congressional session and that it will be signed into law this year,” said Andrew Parasiliti of Barbour Griffith & Rogers International, which is headed by former U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. “This legislation is a top priority for the Bush administration and has overwhelming bipartisan congressional support. It is the most significant issue facing the U.S.-India relations today,” Dr. Parasiliti told Reuters.
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Don’t blame Pak without proof: USA
Islamabad, October 4 “India should communicate with Pakistan by having direct contact instead of talking about the Mumbai train blasts in the Public,” Dawn newspaper quoted US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan C. Crocker as saying here last evening. He said the USA wanted Indian and Pakistani governments to discuss all issues between them, including the Kashmir issue, to normalise their relations. “We hope that both countries will keep all their channels open to rectify their misunderstandings,” he said, adding that accusing statements will serve no purpose. The USA, he said, appreciated the spirit and sense of understanding reached between Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Havana for resolving the issues peacefully. Mr Crocker did not rule out the possibility of extending nuclear technology to Pakistan for civilian purposes. Both countries, he said, had started discussion over the issue and currently Pakistan’s energy requirements were being assessed. He said, besides conventional resources, Pakistan would be provided all support to explore alternative energy resources through short, medium and long-term plans that would also involve the private sector. Asked whether the Bush administration would allow American investors to set up nuclear power plants in the proposed “Designated Industrial Nuclear Parks” in Pakistan, he said, “We have made a beginning and the USA could consider that idea”. The US said the whole story of disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan’s proliferation network was “not yet out” and there were “many aspects” to it in the face of ongoing proliferation in North Korea and Iran. However, Islamabad insisted that the chapter was closed and conveyed its stand during a meeting between National Security Council Secretary, Tariq Aziz and US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker yesterday. “We have thoroughly interrogated the matter and there is nothing more to report about Dr Khan’s activities regarding nuclear proliferation,” an official was quoted as saying by The Nation. “If the US has any specific information in this regard, Pakistan will consider it,” Aziz told Crocker. —
UNI, PTI
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Chemistry Nobel for American
Stockholm, October 4 Kornberg was the first to create an actual picture of this process at the molecular level, in the important group of organisms called eukaryotes, which, as opposed to bacteria, have well-defined cell nuclei. Mammals, as well as ordinary yeast, belong to this group of organisms. “Understanding of how transcription works also has a fundamental medical importance”, the Royal Swedish Academy said in its citation in announcing the award. “Disturbances in the transcription process are involved in many human illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation.” The 59-year-old is part of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, and his father, Arthur Kornberg, won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1959 for his studies of how genetic information was transferred from one DNA molecule to another. He is the lone winner of the prize, and the fifth American to win a Nobel prize this year. So far, all the prizes — medicine, physics and chemistry — have gone to
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Iran moots new N- plan
Tehran, October 4 A top Iranian official yesterday said the crisis could be resolved if France created a consortium to produce enriched uranium on Iranian soil, a proposal that stops short of western demands Tehran suspends the sensitive nuclear activity. “The best solution to dispel the worries about Iran’s nuclear activities is not to demand a suspension” of enrichment, the deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Saeedi, told AFP. “We have an idea that technically and legally is the best solution.” “It is that France creates a consortium with Eurodif and Areva to carry out enrichment in Iran and thus they can closely monitor our nuclear programme,” he added, referring to France’s enrichment specialist and its parent company. But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Cairo as part of a West Asian tour, dismissed the move as an “old idea.”.
— AFP
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Indian stabbed to death in Bahrain
Dubai, October 4 Sampat( 25) belonging to Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, was stabbed in the stomach and chest and died in an ambulance on way to the Salmaniya Medical Complex. The other man escaped the scene and the police is looking for him, media reports said.
— PTI
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2 of Indian-origin accused of fraud in US New York, October 4
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