Nuclear Thread - 2

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<b>US-INDIA NUCLEAR DEAL GENERATES VEHEMENT OPPOSITION IN INDIAN PARLIAMENT & PUBLIC DEBATE: An Analysis</b> <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Indian Prime Minister for some uncanny reasons was not really forthcoming on the progress of negotiations of the Deal as they became more complex and vexing. The whole process was mishandled in the sense that on such a sensitive issue as “nuclear programs” which are India’s lexicons of power, the Indian Prime Minister should have widened the spread of consensual discussions </b>with political parties, the scientific community and the strategic community. He did not do so.

<b>The whole process was confined to the precincts of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) generating an environment where more details were available in Washington than in New Delhi</b>. Differences and pressures had commenced in early 2006 itself on the separation plan and the issue of including FBR program in the civil list.
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The paper quoted above carried detailed excerpts of a very dismissive response by a <b>junior PMO bureaucrat to Dr. Kakodkar going public on the “shifting of goal posts” by USA. </b> This was unwarranted as the Indian public reposed greater trust in the Indian nuclear scientists who brought about independently India’s nuclear weapons program.  The Prime Minister should have restrained the PMO bureaucracy from such dismissive responses as it is not the sole repository of India’s strategic wisdom and foresight.

Symptomatic of the above has been the uproar in Parliament today generated by statements by the Indian Ambassador in USA Ronen Sen alluding to the opponents of the Deal in India and the Parliament as responses made by “headless chickens” etc and other disparaging remarks.

<b>The scribe who quoted Ambassador Sen has stood by his remarks and disputed the Ambassador’s contention that he was misquoted.</b>

India can do without “committed diplomats and bureaucrats” delving into domains that do not fall within the purview of their official duties.  It <b>is not their duty to defend the Deal and they should have left it to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister to defend it</b>.

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The US-India Nuclear Deal finalization should have been a landmark event and a watershed in US-India relations. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Regrettably, the way it has been mismanaged by an obdurate Indian Prime Minister with total disregard to consensual national approaches has robbed it of its sheen. </span>

<b>There was no logical reason for the Indian Prime Minister to indulge in undue secrecy during the negotiations of the US-India Nuclear Deal. Some suggest that cloaking it with a veil of secrecy was an Indian suggestion. </b>

The negativities that have been generated in the last two years in India’s official handling of the US-India Nuclear Deal and connected foreign policy issues may affect the future course of US-India Strategic Partnership, too. 
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Ravishji, above is common feeling.