The prime minister’s website records some of the responses he gave to the nuclear scientists when he met them after his statement of 17 August, 2006 in the Rajya Sabha. Asked about what India’s response would be if the US Congress passed the bills as they had emerged from the House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dr Singh said: “I had taken up with President Bush our concerns regarding provisions in the two bills. It is clear that if the final product is in its current form, India will have grave difficulties in accepting the bills. US has been left in no doubt as to our position...In their final form, if US legislation or the NSG guidelines impose extraneous conditions on India, the government will draw the necessary conclusions consistent with my commitments to Parliament.”

Dr Manmohan Singh had earlier told the Rajya Sabha itself, “We have concerns over both the House and Senate versions of the bill.” He had recalled the 18 July, 2005 Joint Statement and the Separation Plan that government had announced in March 2006, and added, “What we can agree with the United States to enable nuclear cooperation must be strictly within these parameters.”

The bill as it has been passed by the Senate is not just what it was then, and in accepting which the prime minister had said India “will have grave difficulties,” it now has provisions which, as we shall see, put it even farther outside the lakshman rekhas that Dr Manmohan Singh had drawn in the Rajya Sabha. But, lo and behold, the bill is being projected as a great breakthrough for the nuclear deal, indeed for India. The fact that the vote in the Senate was overwhelmingly in its favour, is being projected as a triumph of Indian diplomacy!

... contd.