Last week the House of Representatives debated and passed the United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006. I think that most of the debate missed what I consider the most important points.
First of all, I should emphasize that every Congressman, even those most strongly opposed to the deal, introduced their remarks with praise for India. I have not yet come across any American commentator anywhere who does not feel that it is natural and desirable for the United States and India to have closer ties. I think that one of the great tragedies of the Cold War was that the United States and India seemed early on to have got their wires crossed because of misjudgments on both sides. The one issue on which everyone seems to agree is that India and the United States should be friends. Some of the Congressional comments in fact went a bit overboard. Congressman Davis of Illinois said, “India is a flourishing democracy that seeks to develop its nuclear program for purely peaceful reasons,” which is, of course, patently false—the purely peaceful part—but never mind, it fit the tone of the debate.
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On Monday, President Bush signed into law the Henry J. Hyde United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006. The Federation of American Scientists strongly supports better ties—economic, cultural, technical, even security ties—with India. Specifically with energy production, there are many ways in which U.S. know-how could help India and the technology flow is not all one way, for example, India is, along with the United States, one of the world’s leaders in wind energy. But India made tacit acceptance of their nuclear weapons program the price of better relations. The Federation strongly opposed the nuclear deal because of the proliferation implications. We organized petitions to Congress. Thirty seven Nobel Prize winners from our Board of Sponsors signed a letter to the Congressional leadership opposing the agreement. We had a press conference where Michael Krepon and Len Weiss argued against the agreement and we released the Nobelist letter. In the end, however, the president and the Congress seem to have accepted the price set by India and here we are.
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