Bush's Top Foreign Policy Initiative Gets OK

The US House of Representatives recorded an overwhelming favorable vote regarding the US shipments of nuclear civilian fuel and technology to India, a decision many political analysts labeled as one of Bush's first victories in matters of foreign policy initiatives.

One of the US officials, Democrat Tom Lantos at the House International Relations Committee and an avid supporter of the plan, asserted that the proposal, which turns against years of non-proliferation policy exerted by the United States, represents "a tidal shift in relations between India and the United States. We are at a hinge of history, as we seek to build a fundamentally new relationship". Other supporters of the plan asserted that this deal consolidates the relationship with a strategic country which has quite a long and rich experience in cautiously maintaining a nuclear program. Moreover, the civilian nuclear energy is able to provide clean energy supplies for a country that desires to sustain its booming economy.

The measure was approved by the House with 359 votes to 68 votes, among the people who voted against it being Jim McDermott, a Democrat from the Washington delegation. Others still question this initiative, stating that it might have quite a disastrous effect on international affairs, given the fact that it has the ability to undermine the Non Proliferation Treaty, which does provide for the civil nuclear trade in exchange for a pledge from nations not to pursue building of nuclear weapons.

According to Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, the vote represents a "historic failure" that "pours nuclear fuel on the fire of an India-Pakistan nuclear-arms race", even though Pakistan was not offered a similar deal by the United States. However, Pakistan is on the verge of building its own nuclear reactor, which would increase the country's nuclear capabilities without United States' help.

In spite of the continuous controversies this vote has sparked, several phases, like the US Senate vote, are yet to be completed in order for India to receive nuclear energy shipments and for the nuclear trade between the two countries to begin.