INDIA:THE US Senate has approved a historic agreement that opens up nuclear trade with India for the first time since New Delhi conducted a nuclear test a quarter of a century ago, giving the Bush administration a significant foreign policy achievement in its final months.
The Bill, which passed 86 to 13 on Wednesday night, now goes to President George Bush for his signature. Mr Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who first conceived of the deal, have pushed hard for it from the earliest weeks of the president's second term.
The agreement, which sparked fierce opposition from nuclear proliferation experts - including for a while Ireland - at meetings of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group, acknowledges India as a de facto nuclear power, even though it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
India until now has been barred from worldwide nuclear trade, leaving its home-grown industry hobbled and short of uranium to run its reactors. The US administration said the deal would bring a substantial portion of India's nuclear industry - though not the facilities producing materials for weapons - under international observation.
With an agreement in hand, India has said it plans to spend $14 billion (€10.13bn) on reactors and other nuclear equipment next year, though France and Russia are expected to be key suppliers.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, criticised the deal as a "non-proliferation disaster". India, along with Pakistan and Israel, never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
India conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, despite international outrage, and continues to produce fissile material. Mr Kimball said the deal "does not bring India into the non-proliferation mainstream" because it "creates a country-specific exemption from core non-proliferation standards that the United States has spent decades to establish".
The agreement was controversial in India as well, and has appeared all but dead several times over the past three years.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh put his governing coalition at risk this summer to complete it before Mr Bush left office.
Communist parties, fearful the agreement would impinge on India's sovereignty, bolted from the government, forcing Mr Singh to find new partners. Once he secured his coalition, the Bush administration mounted a full effort to win approval in Congress.
The agreement had the strong support of both presidential candidates. - ( LA Times-Washington Post)