Indian Military

NEW DELHI: New-found bonhomie between government and the main opposition on the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill in Parliament led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to call up senior BJP leader L K Advani and Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj to thank them for supporting the legislation.

Sources said Singh called up Advani yesterday evening after passage of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010 in Lok Sabha, to thank him and his party for supporting the controversial Bill, which had seen frequent sparring between the government and BJP in the last few days.

During this telephonic conversation, Advani praised Leader of the House in Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee for taking several initiatives and accommodating BJP's point of view on contentious issues in the Bill.

Singh also called up Swaraj to thank her for her party's support to the government on the Bill.

Yesterday, during the debate on the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill 2010, a rare bonhomie was seen in the Lok Sabha between the Congress-led government and BJP with both patting each other for making the proposed legislation see the light of day.

[Stratpost]

India is going to be disappointed with President Barack Obama’s visit beginning Saturday after next. The upside of this is that the Indo-US relationship has come a long way in so short a time as to engender expectations that could induce performance anxiety.

This sense of anticlimax comes after the much tom-tommed civilian nuclear commerce double play by the two countries, which continue to relay over multiple hurdles. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns said at a White House press briefing on the visit on Wednesday, “We’ve worked hard in this administration to follow through, completing, for example, a reprocessing agreement between the US and India six months ahead of schedule.” He also marked the Indian accession to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation on Wednesday, important especially after the Nuclear Liability Bill passed in India, imposing liabilities on nuclear suppliers as well. “We look forward to US companies contributing to Indian civil nuclear development.

WASHINGTON: Terming passing of the civil nuclear liability bill by the Parliament as "flawed", an eminent American expert on South Asian affairs has said the US policy makers and industrial leaders have been taken off guard by this and it threatens to cast a pall over the historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.

With time running fast for the November visit of the US President Barack Obama to India, Lisa Curtis, from the Heritage Foundation, in the first reaction to the bill coming from the US academics which were a key supporter of the nuclear deal called for fixing the flaws in the existing bill.

"With India's legislative clock running down and US President Barack Obama's visit to India set for November, Washington had hoped the Indian government would pass crucial legislation establishing an internationally compliant civil nuclear liability regime that would facilitate US investment in India's nuclear industry," Curtis wrote.

"Such legislation would have been the last step in completing the US-India civil nuclear deal, which has drawn out over five years now," she said.

NEW DELHI: The Nuclear Liability Bill faced fresh roadblocks on Sunday with the BJP and the Left parties asserting that they would oppose any dilution of the suppliers' liability.

Both the BJP and the Left parties have apprehensions over an amendment in the Bill which they feel protects foreign companies in the event of a nuclear accident caused by gross negligence or defective supplies on their part.

"We are very clear that the scope of Clause 17 (B) (relating to suppliers' liability) cannot be diluted," BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said.

"We need that to be addressed and if it is being diluted by this amendment which the government has cleared in the Cabinet, BJP will stand up and object to it," she added.

The Left was categorical that it would not give its nod to such a change in the text of the Civil Nuclear Bill.

"I do not think the Left can agree with these new changes that if it is an intentional one or wilful one, only then operators can take recourse to demand (liability) from suppliers.