US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a proposed US-India nuclear energy deal is good for both countries and for global efforts to reduce the spread of atomic technology and greenhouse gas emissions.
In her first public comments on the agreement since India’s government won a confidence vote that paves its way forward, Rice said on Thursday the administration of US President George W. Bush would press US lawmakers to approve the agreement in the coming months.
“I think we can make a very good case that this is not just a landmark deal but a positive landmark deal,” she told reporters aboard her plane as she flew from an Asian security conference in Singapore to Australia.
“It’s certainly our hope that we can get through all the processes and get this done in the Congress, and we are going to work very expeditiously toward that goal,” Rice said.
Bush called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday and both leaders expressed a desire to see the nuclear issue move forward as quickly as possible, Gordon Johndroe said, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House.
The pact would end more than three decades of nuclear isolation for India by opening its civilian reactors to international inspections in exchange for the nuclear fuel and technology.
In the past, India had been denied such outside help because of its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its testing of atomic weapons.
Rice said India has a good record of not spreading its nuclear technology and that safeguards are built into the deal. She said its approval would help India meet its demand for energy without using oil or coal.
“India is a country that has tremendously growing demand for energy,” she said. “It is a country that, if it tries to meet that demand through carbon-based sources for energy, is going to contribute dramatically to the continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions.”
India imports about 75 percent of its oil, and Singh has argued the country needs the nuclear deal to power its financial growth and lift hundreds of millions of its 1.1 billion citizens out of poverty.
On Tuesday, Singh was forced to call a confidence vote after communist political parties withdrew their support for his government this month to protest the agreement, fearing it would draw India closer to the US.
Though Singh made enemies in his bid to push ahead with the nuclear deal, he had the backing of India’s powerful business community and won the vote.
In addition to congressional approval, the deal requires India to strike separate agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group of countries that export nuclear material.
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