Rice’s defence at the two important legislative panels—the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee—was to be the ace in the Bush Administration’s political poker with the Congress.

Rice’s performance exceeded all expectations in India. Bush’s campaign and Rice’s testimony extracted the long-awaited political support from key Democrats, including former Presidential Candidate Senator John Kerry and Senate Minority leader Joseph Biden. While Indian and American media were writing off the prospects for the passage of the nuclear deal in the US Congress even before the game had begun, Rice yesterday demonstrated that the deal was not only credible but also politically doable.

Responding to exaggerated Congressional concerns on India’s ties with Iran, Rice had the courage to point out that it is the US that does not have relations with Tehran while most other countries do.

Putting the Iran question in perspective, Rice said, “Italy is Iran’s largest trading partner. Japan is a very large trading partner of Iran. The truth of the matter is that we are the ones that have no relationship with Iran; most of the world does have relations with Iran.”

Rice also provided the most cogent arguments so far on why the deal must remain India-specific and why it cannot be extended to Pakistan.

When Kerry suggested that China could undermine the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal by threatening a similar deal with Pakistan, Rice said, “We’ve been very clear—publicly, privately—with China, with Pakistan itself, that Pakistan is not an appropriate state for this kind of an exception. It’s just a different history.”

... contd.