Were the Congress to pass a ‘Resolution of Disapproval’, the president can veto it, they pointed out. To set that veto aside, a new resolution will have to be passed — but this would require a two-thirds majority. And such a majority is difficult to muster, they noted.

The Joint Explanatory Statement which the conference of the two Houses submitted to them along with the final bill records the strictures explicitly, and shows the purposes that the US Congress sets out to accomplish by overturning the proposal of the Administration. The relevant passages are indeed worth reading — they give the lie to the alibi that the government, its stooges, and the American spinners are peddling. In rejecting the Administration’s proposal, the Joint Explanatory Statement says, “In effect, the Administration’s proposal would have given it excessive latitude in negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement with India, leaving Congress with little ability to influence the terms of that agreement, regardless of any concerns it might have.

“Both the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected this approach, believing that the Administration’s proposal did not provide for appropriate congressional oversight over what was, by any measure, an unprecedented nuclear cooperative relationship with India. Both committees were troubled by the lack of consultation by the Administration with Congress before the July 18, 2005 Joint Statement and the March 2006 US-India Declaration (in which the terms by which India would separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and further commitments by the United States were announced).”

... contd.