Former US ambassadors give a thumps-up to Indo-US nuke deal

Washington, July 26 (UNI) As the House of Representatives today takes up a vote on the legislation pertaining to civil nuclear cooperation with India, two leading former diplomats, say it would cement a strategic partnership between India and the United States, overcoming ''decades of unrealistic and futile attempts to force India to abandon its nuclear arsenal while sandwiched between two nuclear-armed rivals.'' Writing in the Washington Times the diplomats, Frank Wisner and Thomas Pickering, who have both served as US ambassadors to New Delhi said India has felt estranged and demeaned for the past thirty years as it was kept out while the US shared its nuke technology with China and other less friendly or responsible nations.

Claiming that a positive vote on the legislation would pluck the ''cinder in the eye'' of the India-US strategic relationship and bring India on an equal footing to share sensitive US technology, Mr Wisner and Mr Pickering said ''this vote will be in the supreme US national interests and will be a step closer to a foreign policy trophy commensurable with Nixon's opening to China: a flourishing strategic partnership with India.'' They said civil nuclear cooperation with India would catalyze alignment of the two great democracies for the 21st century.

Prospects for enactment are sanguine during the 106th Congress.

It demonstrates how much a president can accomplish in foreign and national security affairs if Congress gets a ticket for the take-off as well as for the landing, to borrow from former Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Michigan Republican.

They noted that virtually every member of Congress understands the centrality of India to US national security interests. ''India appreciates the horror of international terrorism because it has suffered on a scale reminiscent of September 11, 2001: hundreds of casualties recently in Mumbai from bombs planted on seven commuter trains; an attack on India's parliament; and recurrent horrors in Kashmir.'' Both the diplomats said India generally supports the US over Iran's nuclear ambitions, peace in West Asia, reconstruction of Afghanistan, and spread of democracy in Nepal and elsewhere. The two countries are co-founders of the Global Democracy Initiative.

Its permanent interests on energy, free enterprise, the environment and non-proliferation, and a balance of power in Asia converge with those of the United States.

They said, ''to vote for civil nuclear cooperation with India is to vote on the right side of history, for non-proliferation, and in the US supreme national interests.'' UNI XC PR PM1912