By APP,
New York : The stalled US-India nuclear deal is unlikely to get completed before the Bush administration leaves office early next year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing American officials.
The newspaper said in a report that the lack of action would represent a further unravelling of President Bush’s foreign policy agenda, which has been plagued by instability in Iraq and Afghanistan.
State Department officials have said the Indian Parliament would need to ratify New Delhi’s commitment to the agreement by June in order for Congress to have the time to pass the nuclear pact into US law before Bush leaves office. But, the Journal said a lack of action in India in recent months is leading many in Washington to believe the Bush administration has run out of time.
Some US officials, it said, believe the Indian government already is looking ahead to a new US administration. “It is not unusual as one approaches the end of an administration for foreign nations to look at proposed agreements and see a much larger benefit to concluding it under the incoming” president, a US official working on proliferation issues, was quoted as saying.
The accord would offer India, the world’s sixth largest energy consumer, US nuclear technology and fuel. In return, India would open its civilian reactors to international inspectors. Some Indian security analysts have argued that India can get better energy deals elsewhere.
The US-India deal, proposed by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005, was conceived as a centerpiece for a strategic partnership between the two countries.
The proposed deal has come under strong criticism by some American non-proliferation experts who say it violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and that the move could spark a regional arms race.