Fast forward

While we are being fed soporifics, while Parliament is being stuffed with routine platitudes — “government will certainly keep in mind the important points that have been raised by honourable members” — the fact is that the government has succumbed to and swallowed whole, all the conditions that the US Congress has set out in the final Act. This is evident from what the principal negotiator for the Americans, Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, said upon his return to the US. In its dispatch of December 14, the PTI reports him as saying, “The way the Congress ended up in the Conference Report is a deal that is acceptable to the United States; and I understand it is acceptable to India. That is what the Indian Government told me in the private meetings and that is essentially what I understood from Foreign Minister Mukherjee’s statements in the Parliament as well,” he said.

Burns noted that the United States has left behind a draft proposal for the conclusion of the so-called 123 Agreement and is keen on pushing the process in an expedited fashion. “The United States has left with the Indian Government a draft agreement and we are waiting for the Indian Government to respond and I am sure it will quickly,” he said.

Not just that it has swallowed whole every condition that the US Act lays down, the government is rushing ahead to sign the 123 Agreement. A related dispatch of rediff.com dated December 13, 2006, from Washington DC, quotes Burns as saying, “Once we get the response to our proposal, we will make sure that our team is available immediately for meeting. I agree with Ambassador Saran and Foreign Secretary Menon that all of us want to push these negotiations forward on a very rapid pace in January and February and I am optimistic that we’ll be able to complete this.”

... contd.