India confident N-deal would win US Congress approval
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
New Delhi, June 24, IRNA
India-US-Nuke deal
India on Saturday expressed confidence its nuclear deal with the United States would win US Congress approval following the Bush administration's pledge to support a bi-partisan legislation on the pact.
"Although nothing can be predicted, we are confident that this deal will win US Congress approval. If we were not confident, there would have been no deal in the first place," Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told PTI on the margins of a valedictory ceremony in honor of the 2004 IFS batch here.
His comments came in the wake of the Bush administration asserting its opposition to "deal-breaker" amendments by US Congress that could force it to "go back and renegotiate" the pact.
The US House of Representatives' International Relations Committee is scheduled for a mark-up or fine tuning on Tuesday of the text of a bi-partisan legislation authored by its chairman, Henry Hyde, and ranking member Tom Lantos on the Indo-US civi nuclear deal.
The following day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will mark-up a bill authored by its chairman, Richard Lugar, and ranking Democrat Jospeh Biden.
"We have pledged to the Congress today that we would favor, support a majority vote, a straight up and down vote in the Congress at the end of the process on that US-India bilateral agreement," Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has said.
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