Saturday, September 9 2006 12:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: A US think tank wants the Senate to quickly clear the nuclear deal with India by dropping the controversial 'Additional Protocol' if necessary to avoid any suspicions about Washington's commitment.

Given the historical importance of this agreement, officials on either side should resist the temptation to bargain endlessly over details and instead focus their energies on finalising the deal without further delay, the Heritage Foundation suggests in a paper.

Both the countries must keep their eyes on the prize as it would be disastrous for US-India relations if those opposed to the deal on either side manage to scuttle it and undermine the hard-won progress, said Lisa Curtis and F.M. Kirby, research fellows at the conservative think tank.

The Senate too should move as quickly as possible since further delay would raise suspicions in India that the US is not fully committed to sealing the deal and could chip away at Indian public support for moving forward, they said.

Many in India are beginning to question the benefits of the agreement, and any further hold-up could make it more difficult for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to continue to back it, Curtis and Kirby noted.

Despite Indian criticisms of the legislation, excessive tinkering at this stage carries the risk the carefully crafted legislation will lose the strong US bipartisan support it now enjoys, they warned.

Some worry the addition of the 'US Additional Protocol Implementation' could slow Senate passage of the India nuclear deal. This is a second title of the bill that would implement an agreement between the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding IAEA inspections of US civil nuclear facilities.

Some senators are wary of passing the Title II legislation for national security reasons, but US nuclear facilities used for national security purposes are subject to a national security exclusion clause under the agreement because the US is a recognised weapons state under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The national security exclusion clause should be broadened and made permanent through an amendment to Title II. As appropriate, it should name specific facilities and categories of facilities that are covered by the exclusion clause, the paper suggested.

However, if such an amendment will result in undue delay in the adoption of the provisions of the bill related to the bilateral agreement with India, the Senate should simply strip Title II from the bill and take it up at a later date, Curtis and Kirby said.

Meanwhile, another think tank, the Arms Control Association (ACA) focusing on arms control policies, notes India is upset about measures that US lawmakers have attached to the deal, and both US and Indian negotiators are at a standoff on some key aspects.

The Bush administration, however, is backing India's opposition to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee provision that would prohibit exports of uranium-enrichment, plutonium reprocessing and heavy-water technologies to India unless destined for facilities involved in approved bilateral or multilateral projects, Wade Boese of the ACA suggested.

The Bush administration is also objecting to a Senate provision mandating new end-use monitoring measures to ensure US nuclear exports to India are not diverted to unintended destinations or uses, he said.

The House and Senate bills also mandate annual reporting on all US exports to India during the previous year, as well as Indian adherence to or progress toward several non-proliferation agreements and practices.

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said these reporting requirements were not acceptable because the effect of such certification will be to diminish a permanent waiver authority into an annual one.

If the US ceased cooperation with India because of any violation of the agreement on New Delhi's part, the House bill obliges Washington to try and prevent other foreign suppliers from filling the void.

Similarly, the July 20 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report stated: "The committee is particularly concerned that the US would not facilitate or encourage the continuation of nuclear exports to India if US exports were to be terminated."

Singh, however, made repeated references in his parliamentary address to the US commitment in a March 2006 joint statement to ensure India with an uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel and to join with India and other countries to restore fuel supplies if a disruption ever occurred.

A key sticking point in US-Indian negotiations on the cooperation agreement pertains to the conditions triggering its termination. Washington is seeking inclusion of a clause specifying that if India conducts a nuclear test, the agreement would be abrogated, Boese said.

The testing issue is one of about a half dozen that need to be worked out by US and Indian negotiators. The two sides met for the first time in June and are expected to meet again in September to discuss a revised draft of the cooperation agreement the US provided Aug 8 to India.

Negotiators have agreed to resolve separately the process by which India might be permitted to reprocess US-origin material. India had wanted the agreement to include pre-approval for such reprocessing, a benefit that the US has only extended to Japan and the European consortium EURATOM. But the US delegation said these were special cases and would not be replicated.

Estimates of when the negotiations may conclude vary greatly, but the agreement cannot be finalised until after India completes safeguards negotiations with the IAEA, Boese said.