‘But you must wait for the 123 Agreement’

At each step, we have been told, “But this is just a step on a long journey. You must wait till...” When the House of Representatives passed its Bill, we were told, “But this is just the House Bill. The Senate Committee is considering its own version. The sections that are causing concern in India will be ironed out by the Committee.” When the Senate Committee sent its draft to the full Senate, and, far from “ironing out” those sections, it added another slew of unacceptable conditions, we were told, “No, no. This is just the recommendation of a committee. We must wait for the Bill that the full Senate will pass. We have been assured that our concerns will be addressed in that version.” When the Senate passed the Bill, and it had two additional conditions which even the Committee had not recommended, we were told, “No, no. But the two Bills differ. You must wait for the Joint Conference of the two Houses to see what the final Act will be.”

Now that the final Act has been passed by the two Houses, and it is evident that not one assurance that the prime minister has given to Parliament, not one has been heeded in the least, we are being told, “No, no. But you must wait for the 123 Agreement. We have been assured that not one of these sections will be in it.” There is a threefold deception in that.

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.

... contd.

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