Nuclear Thread - 2

[ramana]

From Telegraph, 17 Oct., 2007
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Extempore plea to save N-deal
K.P. NAYAR
Washington, Oct. 16: <b>It was like a political requiem for the Indo-US nuclear deal </b>which has dominated the relationship between Washington and New Delhi for two years and three months.

<b>None other than Gary Ackerman,</b> a founding member and two-time co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, <b>performed it.</b>

Perhaps ironically, he was addressing a group of visiting Indian MPs, several of whom belong to parties opposed to the deal.

<b>“Do not let the radical few hijack what is in your nation’s best interest,” </b>Ackerman said in an emotional outburst that would have stalled Parliament tomorrow in response if it had been in session.

<i>{In other words <b>US Congressman</b> knows whats in India's national interests but visitng Indian MPS dont!}</i> hock:

“I say to my American and Indian friends, in order for progress to be made, courage needs to be shown.”

<b>Ackerman threw away his prepared speech </b>as word drifted in at the lunch in honour of the MPs that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told Bush in a telephone conversation that “certain difficulties have arisen with respect to the operationalisation” of the nuclear deal.

<i>{Should he be nominated for diplomatic Oscar?}</i>

Speaking extempore because “we have been overtaken by events”, Ackerman told those in charge in New Delhi: “Do not cave in.… The ball is back in your court.”

<b>He furiously lammed into the Left parties. </b>“To those who would try to bully from a minority position, <b>to tell the majority of people what is in their national interests and that if they do not do as that group says, that they are being bullied, are themselves the bullies.”</b>

<i>{Wow Again. And he is leader of India caucus? He wants the proverbial Indian Brahmin to walk back into the cage!!! For those who dont know read The brahmin and the tiger  in the Panchatantra}</i>

<b>Ackerman’s bitterness and sense of disappointment, political in nature, was in sharp contrast to the sanguine attitude at the state department, where the pointman for the deal, Nicholas Burns, also met Indian MPs yesterday.</b>

<i>{Looks like good cop bad cop drama. Its not Hollywood alone that should get best acting and screenplay Oscars.}</i>

Tom Casey, the department’s deputy spokesman, took a practical view of the agreements to be negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. “Each one of these agreements is complicated. They have got a whole variety of things associated with them. <b>I am not going to try and tell the Indians how to manage their own internal process on this,” Casey said.</b>

“We are going to continue to work on our part and we assume they are going to continue to work on theirs and it (the deal) will be done in a time that is appropriate for both sides.”

<b>The venue for the political requiem held infinite symbolism. It was the large Hall of Flags of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), where many strategy sessions were held — including one attended by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and another by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — on how to take forward the nuclear deal.</b>

<i>{So even the stage and venue was dramatic! How touching and poignant!}</i>

Appropriately, <b>Ackerman had a good word for American multinational corporations who are USIBC members, without whose lobbying the deal would never have got past the US Congress during its first stage.</b>

<b><i>{Otherwise they want their money back!}</i></b>  8)

Aiming his thrust at those who accuse US businesses of self-interest in promoting the deal, he said: <b>“The business people who are among us today — under whose umbrella we assemble today — are not just financial mercenaries. They do have the interests of their peoples in mind. There is money to be made in progress, there is also peace and security to be made in progress, if progress is made the right way.”</b>

<i>{President Grover Cleveland was the one who  said "The Business of America is Business" and folks thought he was a country bumpkin!}</i>

<b>Ackerman was joined by several businessmen who spoke of their disappointment over yesterday’s developments. </b>

Michael Gadbaw, vice-president and counsel for General Electric, regretted that “the crowning achievement” in Indo-US relations “hangs in a delicate balance as politics complicates consideration” of the deal.

<b>“From what I can tell of the debate, the party of Jyoti Basu — whom I came to know while he was chief minister of West Bengal and who has done so much for his state — that party has failed to appreciate the importance and significance of this agreement to the future and prosperity of our two countries,” he said.</b>

<i>{One good thing that might come out of this is that uncle will stop funding the Lefties with scholarships and education trips to massaland for them and their kinfolks. Most of the Lefties kids are in Massaland at Ivy league schools and get jobs on Wall street or Sand Hill Road. }</i>

The atmosphere was so charged that B.J. Panda, the mild-mannered and suave co-chairman of the India-US Forum of Parliamentarians (IUFP) tried to cool the temperature by pointing to other bright spots in New Delhi’s ties with Washington.

The MPs’ team has been put together by the IUFP and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

<b>Trade had doubled and the US is now India’s biggest trading partner, Panda pointed out. It was not a one-issue relationship with Washington, he said.</b>

Polite as he was, <b>Panda was not taking anything lying down. He firmly defended India’s right to determine the nature and content of its ties with Iran. In an implied dig at Washington’s protection of Pakistan, Panda said India was the second biggest contributor to development in Afghanistan after the US. But with Pakistan blocking India’s access to Afghanistan, the only route for Indian supplies to that country was through Iran.</b>

<i>{Panda might get his cumuppence he carries on too much. Look at poor Hsu who is now a political untouchable. But proud of him for retorting while Indian MEA was supine and silent. A true self made man and not a lifafa bearer.}</i>

<b>Samajwadi Party’s Shahid Siddiqui came to the defence of the Left parties </b>although he pointed out that he was not one of them. Siddiqui said he shared some of the concerns of the Left about the Hyde Act, adding that <b>India would rather work with China in the interest of regional peace than confront it</b>.

<b>To that extent, he said, there were genuine worries about the implications of the Hyde Act on India’s diplomatic freedom. </b>

<i>{So Left concerns are only in the diplomatic sphere and not anything else. One way out is if the objectionable passages in Hyde Act are dropped and some Presidential action about the irrelevance of those passages might allow the Left to support the UPA in signing up. So kep the cork on the champagne. The foolish Brahmin might still believe the tiger.}</i>

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