No new clauses in nuclear pact to make India unhappy: US

Washington, Aug 3 (UNI) No new clauses have been written into the Senate version of the legislation pertaining to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal to make India unhappy, says Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar.

He said New Delhi should be very well aware that the US policy prohibits export of enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production technology as well as an end-use monitoring system to track nuclear technology exports to India.

It is this policy that has been incorporated into the Lugar-Biden bill and was passed by 16-2 votes in the Senate panel in June.

But he wondered why Indian officials have taken objections to this prohibition in the Senate version of the bill.

Mr Lugar clarified that there were no conditions attached to the bill which is likely to be debated on the floor of the Senate sometime in September.

The House has already voted the legislation with a thumping majority of 359 to 68 votes.

The matter came up during a hearing yesterday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took up for consideration the nomination of John Rood to be Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation.

Replying to some questions from the chair Mr Rood told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prefers prohibitions on export of enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production technology as well as an end-use monitoring system to track nuclear technology exports to India to stay in the realm of policy as opposed to a ''matter of law''.

Mr Lugar said, ''Some Indian government officials have argued that this prohibition in the Senate bill moves the goal-posts set by the original July 2005 agreement.'' He said including this prohibition in the legislation, was consequent to arguments made during our hearing and during our mark-up, when the majority of members of the Committee felt it was important to state the policy.

''(But) I would simply ask, did New Delhi not understand United States policy? If they did understand the policy, please give us your opinion on why they oppose placing the prohibition into law, if they can accept the existence of the policy,'' he asked Mr Rood.

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