A senior US lawmaker Congressman Gary Ackerman, New York Democrat, while acknowledging that he has been one of the strongest critics of President George Bush on his foreign policy, has said however, that in the case of India, Bush had got it "absolutely right."
Ackerman, twice co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, and a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the new chairman of the panel's Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said that while the overwhelming support for the US-India nuclear deal in Congress was "indeed a non-partisan endeavor," that was adopted "against all the odds," it was well known that "I can be a partisan Democrat, and sometimes I've been very critical of the president."
He was speaking at a gala reception-cum-dinner hosted by the US-India Friendship Council on behalf of the Indian-American community at the Four Seasons Hotel to pay tribute to the protagonists in the Bush administration and Congress who were the catalysts behind the enabling legislation to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear agreement.
Addressing more than the 100 guests -- all community leaders in their own right from across the country, who had been responsible for mobilising the community at large to use their clout and influence to convince Congress to support the deal -- Ackerman acknowledged, "I have been critical of the president on so many foreign policy issues because in my view, he got so much of it wrong, and so much of it was just doing the opposite that the previous president Bill Clinton did."
"I used to tease him and say that hating Bill Clinton is not a substitute for foreign policy. So much of what the current president did was different and that is his style. But when it came to India, if he had to pick one important country in the world, he got it absolutely right," Ackerman said.
He also showered kudos on Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the chief US negotiator of the deal, saying, "I've never seen anybody from any administration in the 25 years I've been in Washington, who's worked so hard on an issue as you have on this one and it has paid off."
Ackerman lauded Burns for "the great effort that was put forth by the administration -- and in this case working so closely with the Congress and with the Democrats in Congress as well because that was going to be the key to this."
Elaborating, Ackerman said, "In the Democratic Party, we still have a group that has nothing to do with India, but they are anti-nuclear."
"If you try to build a nuclear reactor or propose a nuclear energy programme in their state or their district or something nearby, they are against it. Anywhere in America," he said. "But that doesn't mean that they are against America. They have a perspective on things nuclear, which predisposes some of them -- not to support any deal, especially on an international basis, when they are not doing at home that has to do with nuclear."
Ackerman said, consequently, "We had to make sure that despite that we were able to round up the votes to get a lot of people over that obstacle -- as many of them as we could -- to put together a huge majority of Democrats and a huge majority of Republicans to go along with this deal, working hand in hand with the president and Nick Burns -- who basically baby-sat us on this thing through the House."
But in the final analysis, he declared that it was the Indian-American community that delivered "and all the credit really goes to you because you percolated that interest across America. You helped make the case as to why this was a good deal for America and it was an important case to make."
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