Nuclear

The Obama Administration has stood by the civil nuclear deal between India and the US negotiated and finalized in 2008 in the second term Of the presidency of George W. Bush. However, the Democratic Party Is less enthusiastic about the deal that was the Republican Party which wanted to restore the nuclear power industry in the United States. Hilary Clinton, during her visit to New Delhi, assured the Indian government of president Obama’s decision not to revisit the deal which Passed both chambers of Congress in December 2008. However, the Obama administration has asked the Indian government to limit, by legislation, liabilities U.S. companies might be required or expected to meet if there were an accident in any of the nuclear power projects built by them. The Manmohan Singh government finds this a hard job. The U.S. will not operationalise the nuclear deal until parliament has passed the limited liability bill that is still to be drafted. The recent anniversary of the Union Carbide factory explosion in Bhopal in which hundreds were killed or suffered radiation. And the pittance paid by the US company to compensate the victims made it more difficult for the government to adopt legislation legally limiting liabilities of companies building civil nuclear reactors in India. The non-proliferation lobby in the U.S. which has a much larger constituency in the Democratic party than in the Republican party will use the situation to obstruction operalisation of the civil nuclear agreement. Pakistan is miffed by the U.S. refusal to offer it a civil nuclear Deal similar to the Indo-US deal. China has registered its opposition citing the argument that the deal would encourage proliferation, and making it difficult to prevent North Korea from openly going nuclear and also arguing that, with the Indo-US deal coming into operation, it would be all the more difficult for the U.S. to keep Iran short of defiant proliferation. Russia and France, the two powers which will probably the principal sources pf Indian imports of civil nuclear projects and/or technologies will benefit from the kind of legislation the U.S. has asked India to undertake. The CPI-M and its Left allies which opposed the nuclear deal With the US are happy with the embarrassment of the Manmohan Singh government. The CPI-M withdrew support to the first UPA Government but could not bring it down nor stop the relentless pursuit of the deal by prime minister Manmohan Singh since 2005. Singh adopted a foreign policy posture that please George Bush--- such as voting against Iran at the UN security council as well as nuclear nonproliferation agency. The nuclear deal, to Singh’s comfort, received overwhelming support from the media. Singh told Sonia Gandhi, who constitutes the ‘high command’ of the ruling Congress party at the Centre, that he would resign if parliament Voted against the nuclear deal which is the most prominent signature Of his leadership of the Congress-led govern