Now let the PM square this circle

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!

What had the prime minister spelled out as the contours beyond which India would not budge? Do the provisions of the bill as finally passed by the Senate fall within those contours? If they do not, how can the country now be made to swallow the deal?

Our foreign policy’s independence

To begin with, the prime minister told the Rajya Sabha: “I would, hence, again reiterate in view of the apprehensions expressed, that the proposed US legislation on nuclear cooperation with India will not be allowed to become an instrument to compromise India’s sovereignty. Our foreign policy is determined solely by our national interests. No legislation enacted in a foreign country can take away from us that sovereign right. Thus there is no question of India being bound by a law passed by a foreign legislature. Our sole guiding principle in regard to our foreign policy, whether it is on Iran or any other country, will be dictated entirely by our national interest.”

... contd.