yanks dying for the nuclear deal: "Now or never"

mar 4th, 2008

yes, they have to get it before the UPA loses power, otherwise all the money they have invested in various moles will be wasted.

this sign of increasing desperation sends out a clear message, doesn't it? i am very touched by their concern for india's interests! yes, these are the same guys who have given musharraf about $26 billion in the last five years.

clearly, the yanks need the nuclear 'deal' more than india does. i don't see any indians (i don't count various shills as "indians" because they have clearly been bought for peanuts) running around like chicken little screaming that the sky is falling.

conclusion: india *can* get a better deal. incidentally, i think it is now virtually even odds that there will be a new republican president in the US. neither obama nor clinton is electable; so unless they go for a brokered convention and draft a dark horse non-candidate like gore, the republicans are going to win.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brahma

US ups the ante on nuclear deal: "Now or Never"

Feb. 10: Amb. David Mulford: "My opinion is that if this is not processed in the present Congress it is unlikely this deal will be offered again to India. It certainly would not be revived and offered by any administration, Democrat or Republican, before 2010, which is after the life of this particular administration in India." Question: "In other words you are saying it is now or may be never." Ambassador Mulford: "That is pretty close to it."

Feb. 20: Three influential US Senators - Joseph Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel - after a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the negotiations with IAEA and NSG should conclude by May failing which New Delhi will not get a "similar" deal when next govenment is formed in Washington. The lawmakers told Singh that if the deal, which faces stiff oppostition from his government's Left allies, is not taken up by the US Congress by June and the process completed during the tenure of President George W Bush, any new US administration will "renegotiate" the agreement.

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, warned the Indians that a civil nuclear agreement had to come before the Senate for approval no later than July. "Time is of the essence," Biden said. If we don't have the deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July, it will be very difficult to ratify," Biden said. He also said it was "highly unlikely" the next president would be able to authorize the same deal, if it did not reach Congress in time. "It will be renegotiated," he said. "It is critical, if India want that deal, they move on relatively soon, within a matter of weeks,'' he said.

26 February: In response to Biden's warning, the White House said Tuesday there was a "bit more time" in the US political calendar before President George W. Bush leaves office. Spokeswoman Dana Perino, however, said: "This agreement is one that we have done carefully, through the State Department, and trying to work with India. We would hope that they would see the benefits from it, and we continue to work with them to try to make it happen."

27 February: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned that "the clock is ticking" on a US-Indian civilian nuclear accord. "The clock is ticking in terms of how much time is available to get all the different aspects of an agreement implemented," Gates told reporters in New Delhi. He said the deal "serves the best interests of both countries".

29 February 2008: Burns (on his last day as US Undersecretary of State) asked the Indian government to take a "courageous" decision on the civilian nuclear deal considering the "short timelines." "If you back up from there, that means that the IAEA agreement must be made within a week or two, and it means the NSG would have to begin acting in the month of March. So there are very short timelines here, and I'm afraid it's time for the government to decide," he said. Mr. Burns said, "If India is to be given this great victory,.. there has to be a courageous decision made by the government to move forward. We hope that decision will be positive."

March 1: Strobe Talbott said that if the Cinton administration, which was dealing with the Vajpayee government, would have been prepared to offer only "half" of what the Bush administration had offered the Manmohan Singh government, "the Indian side [the Vajpayee government] would have gone for it." He told Walk the Talk programme on NDTV: "the deal from our side, the American side, is done. I was relieved when it went as smoothly as it has on the American side, because I want us to turn the page and get on to the next chapter. And it blows my mind when I see the kind of difficulty it has got into on the Indian side."

"The Clinton administration dealt with a BJP government on the nuclear issue and the goals they strove for then are not too dissimilar from what the current Indian government has managed to get out of the Bush administration. I cannot understand why they oppose the deal as vehemently as they have."

"I think, had the Clinton administration been prepared to offer to the BJP-led government the same deal that Bush has been prepared to offer Manmohan Singh and company, the Indian side would have gone for it and they would have also been astonished given what they knew about our position on these issues involved."

March 3: State Department spokesperson Tom Casey says the US wanted to see the agreement "concluded as quickly as possible".

March 4: Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, arrives for a two-day trip to mount further pressure over the nuclear deal.