US-India nuclear deal set to face final hurdle

US:The US Senate has agreed to vote Wednesday on a nuclear pact with India, the final legislative hurdle for a deal that would overturn a three-decade ban on civilian nuclear trade with New Delhi.

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the deal would go before the Senate for a vote late Wednesday, after being approved in the lower House of Representatives on the weekend.

“We will have a vote tomorrow evening on two amendments and final passage of the US-India cooperation deal,” spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle told AFP.

The amendments were related to “the subject of US responses in the event of a future Indian nuclear test,” she said, without elaborating.

India has argued that it has the sovereign right to conduct such a test, while Washington has said the deal would be off if one were carried out.

If the Senate endorses the agreement it would finally end a three decades-long ban on nuclear trade with India imposed after it carried out its first nuclear test in 1974 and refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Washington, Wednesday, AFP