Bush Wins Approval in Congress for Priority India Atomic Accord

"Congress"

10/01/2008

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush won final congressional approval for U.S. companies to sell nuclear fuel and technology to India for its energy needs, achieving one of his top foreign policy priorities.

The Senate voted 86-13 tonight in favor of a resolution to support the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. The House approved the measure, sponsored by California Democrat Howard Berman, by a vote of 298-117 on Sept. 27. The legislation now goes to Bush for his signature.

The approval represents a ``milestone in the transformation of our nation's important relationship with India,'' the White House said in a statement today before the vote.

The agreement allows U.S. companies such as General Electric Co. to provide reactor technology, fuel and other services for the first time in more than three decades to help India provide the energy to power economic growth of more than 8 percent annually.

Supporters argued that the political and economic potential for links with the world's biggest democracy outweighed what they said were unfounded concerns that the accord doesn't contain enough safeguards to prevent India from diverting the technology it receives for civil use to its military program.

A group of 45 nuclear-supplier nations including the U.S. waived international restrictions on exports to India last month. The Nuclear Suppliers Group was founded in 1974 to prevent countries from copying India's use of imported technology to make its first atomic bomb, which it tested that year.

American Companies

Still, American companies needed the U.S. Congress to ratify the direct agreement with India to join the competition with potential suppliers in France, Russia and elsewhere. India plans to acquire nuclear equipment worth $14 billion next year, Shreyans Kumar Jain, chairman of state-run monopoly Nuclear Power Corp., said on Sept. 8.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a similar agreement yesterday.

``This agreement is indicative of a new era in Indian foreign policy, an era in which India will see all the world's powers as potential partners in efforts to address its own needs and the needs of others,'' said Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, in a statement earlier today. ``I believe that this new era will bring increased stability and progress to South Asia.''

Opponents of the agreement, such as the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the India agreement, unlike similar accords with other countries, fails to make clear that an Indian nuclear test would prompt the U.S. to cease nuclear trade.