New Delhi
18 September 2006
A former United States government official who served in the Clinton
Administration has said that China could ask uncomfortable questions in the Nuclear
Suppliers Group when the India-United States civilian nuclear deal comes up before it.
The president of the Brookings Institution and a former US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr
Strobe Talbott, on Monday said it was his "guess" that when the Indo-US nuclear deal
comes up before NSG, China would ask why an exception is being made with regard to
India and not to the country it is close with, an apparent reference to Pakistan.
Mr Talbott, who delivered a talk on "US Foreign Policy in a Presidential Election Season"
at the Observer Research Foundation, believed the Bush Administration is talking to the
Chinese to sort out that problem. He was confident that the nuclear agreement would sail
through in the Congress by the year-end.
Suggesting that the deal clinched by the Bush administration was not perfect, he said the
present government could have sought a better deal which would cover fissile material
control. Talbott, who had been engaged in strategic dialogue with a former Minister of
External Affairs Jaswant Singh, said the agreement had initially been sought by the
Clinton administration and that ground for the nuclear deal with India had been laid
during the previous BJP-led Government.
He said the Clinton administration had laid five benchmarks for the agreement -- CTBT,
export control, nuclear restraint, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and progress in
Indo-Pak relations but could not conclude the deal.
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