IndiaPost.com - Ackerman urges speeding up the Nuclear deal proceedings

NEW DELHI: "It is never late till it is late," said US Congressman Gary Ackerman after analyzing the present situation of Nuclear deal proceedings in India, during his visit to the country. The timeline for the passage of the nuclear deal through the US Congress is more difficult because there will not be a "lame duck" session in the Congress.

This would hold back the deal even further. This was confirmed by Ackerman. Talking to reporters, he said that India needed to have the deal on the Congressional table by September for the US lawmakers to even consider it. "There will be no 'lame duck' session of the Congress," Ackerman said.

"We had been hopeful that the processes will move quickly, but the processes have moved slower than we had hoped because of obvious reasons," said Ackerman, who heads the House Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on South Asia. After meeting the Prime Minister's special envoy on the nuclear deal, Shyam Saran, and foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon, Ackerman made it clear that India will have to speed up the process as the calendar of the US Congress is running quickly and time to get the deal through is getting shorter.

"The Congress is an ongoing entity. We have a calendar. The calendar is running quickly," he said. He said the Congress would break after its session starting September. It would not, however, reconsider for what is known as the "lame duck" session after the US elections in early November, until December. The next time the Congress would meet, he suggested, would be after the new president takes oath in January 2009.

If the deal cannot make it into the Congress by September, he said, it would then be passed over into the next Congress. It will then have to be tabled again. Therefore, by Ackerman's estimate, India needed to complete its IAEA safeguards agreement and get an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group by end August. This would be the only way the Congress could take up the deal by September. Asked whether he thought it was already too late for the deal, Ackerman said, "If they do it on time, we will be prepared."

He said, "I do not know if India will be ready by September" and if New Delhi is not ready, the matter cannot be put on the agenda of the Congress during the remaining calendar. "India has the first bite of the apple. India has the first right to deny," he said. Earlier, in Pakistan, Ackerman told a news agency in that country, "They're not going to be able to do it in time for us to act in this calendar year and certainly not during President Bush's administration." He added, "The clock has run out on our side of the border, because the clock has run out on their side."