Time very short for approval of deal: Rice

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The time is “very short” for the approval of the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Congressional session beginning from Monday, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said while hailing the grant of the NSG waiver to India.

The first thing “is that we still have a little more to do on the determinations for the Hyde Act, and we will try to complete that...,” Rice said in a roundtable with the Travelling Press in Algiers, the capital of Algeria.

“I have already talked before this NSG, several weeks before, to relevant committee chairs about trying to get it done, and I will have those conversations again, most likely on Monday or Tuesday, as well as trying to see whether the leadership believes that this can go forward.” Rice, however said, “...we understand that the time is very short.

We knew that in the summer, when the Indians were able finally to move this forward in their domestic process. But I think we have demonstrated the commitment of the administration to this agreement, because we have worked this with the very, very strong help of partners through the IAEA and through the NSG in very rapid order.”

Normally 30 working days is the mandatory period required for a legislation to be passed in both the houses of the Congress but there are procedures for short-circuiting this period, a device that can be invoked by President Bush so that he is in a position to ratify the 123 agreement when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travels to Washington later this month.

For this, the initiative has to come from the administration. Such an initiative is widely expected from an administration that is clearly short on foreign policy achievements under Bush other than the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Former Indian ambassador Lalit Mansingh, a strong votary of the deal, feels it is entirely possible that the 123 agreement, is in its last lap, and could be pushed through the US Congress in the limited time that is available now.