Click to play videoWashington: Concerns over a possible collapse of the US economy has given a shot in the arm to the critics of the India-US agreement.
They are now lobbying Congress to make sure the deal gets stalled on Capitol Hill.
Arms Control Association (ACA) executive director Daryl Kimball is spending extra hours on Capitol Hill this week convincing lawmakers not to rush a vote on the India-US nuclear agreement.
Kimball is a member of the Washington based ACA, one of the most vocal anti-deal lobby groups in the nation's capital.
Kimball says, "This is being done in a rushed fashion to give a going away gift to Bush and to be polite to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. That's not a good reason to make bad policy."
Bad policy because according to critics, the agreement does not adequately prevent India from using US fuel supplies for enhancing its nuclear weapons program.
This week a group of powerful senators wrote this letter to the Senate Majority leader saying the agreement contains ‘troubling loopholes, gaps and inconsistencies and could lead to a proliferation of enrichment and reprocessing technologies’.
Some critics are even complaining against unfair practices to get the deal through
Kimball says, “Many members of congress are taking contributions from the Indian American community."
Critics are also using the trouble in the US economy to convince lawmakers that they must first take care of domestic issues.
With only a day remaining before the congressional ends, both the proponents and critics of the deal are trying to extract maximum mileage here at Capitol hill.
However, which side wins remains to be seen.
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