By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Henry Hyde, a former Republican member of the US House of Representatives whose name is linked to the Hyde Act, the contentious enabling law on the India-US civil nuclear deal, is dead. He was 83.
Hyde died in Chicago Thursday morning of complications from heart surgery, according to his son, Anthony Hyde.
It was Hyde who as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee led the panel’s efforts to write what has come to be known as the Henry Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act, allowing the Bush administration to carry out an agreement to supply India nuclear fuel and technology.
President George W. Bush signed that act into law Dec 18, 2006 to signal the start of negotiations to finalise the implementing bilateral 123 agreement, so named after the relevant section of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954.
While the Hyde Act allows the export of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India, reversing the sanctions imposed after New Delhi’s 1998 nuclear tests, it does not suspend the requirement to stop exports in case India tests again.
That has proved to be a bone of contention with the nuclear deal’s leftist opponents in India taking it as an attack on the country’s sovereignty. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government contends that the 123 agreement finalised last July supersedes the Hyde Act.
Essentially, the US concessions to India under the 123 agreement cover three points: (1) the right to terminate the deal if India conducts a nuclear test; (2) the reprocessing of spent fuel produced from US-origin nuclear fuel and (3) assurances of supply of nuclear fuel to India if New Delhi suffers a disruption in supply.
Leading US experts generally agree that there is nothing in 123 that is a clear violation of the Hyde Act but suggest that it would be for the US Congress to study the pact closely to see whether it is consistent with the US legislation as contended by the Bush administration.
Bush, who awarded Hyde the Medal of Freedom earlier in November, expressed his sadness at the death.
“This fine man believed in the power of freedom, and he was a tireless champion of the weak and forgotten,” Bush said. “He used his talents to build a more hopeful America and promote a culture of life.”
The Hyde Act’s co-author, Democrat Tom Lantos, who replaced Hyde as chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said: “My dear friend, Henry Hyde, was a giant”. He was “a strong and effective chairman and deeply engaged in US foreign policy. And his impact on the institution of Congress itself has been inestimable”.
Apart from the India nuclear deal, Hyde’s claim to fame includes his successful battle to impeach former President Bill Clinton. However he failed to persuade the Senate to convict and remove him from office.
Hyde, who served as a member of the House from 1975 until 2007, originally dismissed Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky as a “peccadillo”, adding: “You don’t impeach him for a peccadillo”.
He later insisted that impeachment would not go forward without bipartisan support.
He apparently grew increasingly angry with Clinton and his responses to the House Judiciary Committee, which he then chaired, and shepherded impeachment resolutions alleging perjury and obstruction of justice through both the committee and the full House on nearly straight patty line votes.
Hyde was embarrassed when news surfaced of his own extramarital affair 30 years earlier, but dismissed the publication of his “youthful indiscretions” as an attempt to intimidate him.
After the House voted to impeach Clinton, Hyde led House prosecutors in a trial before the Senate. But when votes were taken there, one resolution got 45 votes and the other 50, well short of the two-thirds majority of 67 required for conviction. The Senate acquitted Clinton.
Hyde also championed many foreign-aid measures and backed Clinton over a ban on assault weapons. He supported constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget and prohibiting abortions, flag burning and same-sex marriages.