New York Democrat and the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, Gary Ackerman, has slammed opponents of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement and challenged the latter's assumptions that seek to undermine the deal.

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Ackerman, a senior member of the House International Relations Committee, during a hearing of the panel titled, 'The US-India Global Partnership: Legislative Options,' said, the first assumption by these opponents is the idea that 'somehow India must be held accountable for making the sovereign decision not to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and for developing a nuclear program outside of NPT obligations and limitations.'

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The lawmaker said, "This turns logic on its head. If any nation should be held accountable by the United States or the international community for violation of non-proliferation norms, it should be those nations who agreed to abide by those norms in the first place and then chose to violate them by pursuing nuclear weapons anyway and selling related technologies."

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"The Administration is clueless as to how to deal with them. Thirty years of ostracizing and sanctioning India has not put the nuclear genie back in the bottle and it has not gotten India to abandon its quest for nuclear power. Clearly, it is time for a different approach and the President has proposed one that I believe deserves our support," Ackerman bemoaned.

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He said: "The second assumption by these so-called non-proliferation 'ayatollahs' involved the assertion that, after India received nuclear technology from the US or others in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, somehow this technology would 'leak' to other nations, that India, in effect, would become a rogue proliferator.

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Ackerman ridiculed this argument as ignoring 'decades worth of actual experience with Indian control over nuclear technology. By most clear-eyed accounts, India has an excellent record regarding proliferation of its technology to other nations and now with new and tougher export control legislation adopted by the Indian parliament, India's ability to control such exports is even better.'

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"In addition," he said, "I cannot think of a reason why the Indians on the brink of achieving acceptance as a responsible nuclear power would risk throwing it all away by allowing such sophisticated technology to be sold to another nation."

Finally, he took on the contention by the nay Sayers that the agreement does not constrain India's nuclear weapons program. "I would simply say that the purpose of the agreement was not to stop, rollback, or convince India to abandon its nuclear program," he said.

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"They would not have engaged with us on those terms, Ackerman said, recalling, "We sanctioned, we lectured, we pleaded, but India has made a strategic sovereign decision on this question and I think it is incumbent on us to deal with that set of realities."

He argued that the situation with India was not the same as with Iran, or North Korea, or Pakistan. The message to those that were truly outside the non-proliferation mainstream is that responsible behaviour is rewarded with international acceptance. That is the case for India. The others need not apply.

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Reiterating his kudos for President Bush for having made the right strategic choice in this case regarding the country's relationship with India, Ackerman said, "Welcoming and recognizing India as a responsible nuclear power removes a serious impediment to the type of close and cooperative relationship that the United States should have with an emerging global power."