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Riedel: Delay on U.S.-Indian Nuclear Accord Only a 'Hiccup' On Road to Stronger Ties

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

October 17, 2007

Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA official who served as a senior adviser to three U.S. presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues, says the decision by India’s prime minister not to force a vote in the Indian parliament on the U.S.-India nuclear deal was “quite a tragedy for India, because almost anyone who’s studied this deal believes India got a very, very good deal out of this.” He says that even though the agreement may be in “cold storage,” he believes it is only a “hiccup on the road toward a stronger U.S.-India partnership.”

After months of back and forth on a nuclear agreement between the United States and India, it came as a bit of a surprise when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told President Bush that because of political problems in his parliament, he’s going to have to put off final action on this agreement. Does this mean the agreement is dead?

I don’t think it’s dead, but it’s going into hibernation, or into long-term diplomatic cold storage. It will be difficult—not impossible, but difficult—for the Indian government to push this forward. It would take a decision to risk the unity of the coalition and, particularly, to alienate the Communist parties. At this point it looks like the decision of the prime minister and the Congress Party is to stay in power for as long as possible and to appease the Communists on this issue and not force a showdown in the parliament.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.