N-deal: US Senators set May deadline

Nidhi Razdan
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 (New Delhi)
Time is slipping away for the Indo-US nuclear deal, as India remains locked in talks with the International Atomic Agency.

At a crucial meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, that took place on Wednesday, three US Senators, conveyed a clear-cut deadline on the nuclear deal.

The Senators, two of them influential democrats, told the PM that the deal must reach the US Congress latest by May or early June, otherwise it would not be cleared by the current Congress.

They also expressed concern regarding the fact that the proposal would most certainly be renegotiated by the next President, especially if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama came to power.

The senators are all senior US lawmakers and leading the delegation is Joe Biden, chairman of the very important Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a senior democrat.

''Its critical that if India wants this deal then it needs to move it in a matter of weeks, the clock is ticking, time is running out for this session of Congress and the next president will renegotiate the agreement,'' said Senator Joe Biden, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The PM apparently made no comment on the May deadline but conveyed his party's dilemma on the deal, in view of keeping the coalition together.

Sources in the government have told NDTV that the picture on where the deal is headed is still very hazy. The talks with the IAEA have gone on much longer than anticipated and the biggest hurdle of all, that is convincing the Left, still needs to be tackled.