India Nuclear Deal May Face Hard Sell:
Rice Set to Defend Landmark Accord She Orchestrated Without CongressBy Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 3, 2006; Page A01Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into New Delhi a year ago and set in motion a revolution in U.S. policy on nuclear weapons and relations with India.
She didn't tip her hand publicly during the brief stop, sticking to bland expressions of "a new relationship" with "great potential." The outlines of her plan were known by only a handful of people in the U.S. government.
Four months later, on July 18, President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved a landmark accord at the White House.
Beyond the invasion of Iraq, few of Bush's decisions have as much potential to shake the international order than his deal with India, supporters and opponents agree. The debate over the deal has pitted against each other two powerful national security goals -- the desire to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and the desire to counter the rise of China, in this case by accelerating New Delhi's ascent as a global power.
After three decades of treating India as a pariah because it used a civilian nuclear program to produce fissile material for weapons, Bush decided the United States would forgive the transgression. India would be able to buy foreign-made nuclear reactors if it opened its civilian facilities to international inspections -- while being allowed to substantially ramp up its ability to produce materials for nuclear weapons.
Previously, the administration had favored an incremental easing of the nuclear rules regarding India. This agreement, as one of Rice's aides put it, was "the big bang," designed to bring historically nonaligned India firmly into the U.S. camp. But the deal has spawned fierce controversy in Washington, in part because going forward would require Congress to change laws for the nuclear sales. Rice will defend the agreement in congressional testimony this week.
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