Thaindian News

New Delhi, July 15 (ANI): Former US Ambassador to India Frank G Wisner has said that there will be no change in the US administration’s position on the civil nuclear deal with India.

Wisner told captains of Indian industry here last evening that the Obama administration will not deviate from the previous ’sovereign decision’.

“The United States has made a sovereign decision. We passed a high rank followed by the 123 Agreement. We are bound by those. We are a nation of laws. This administration is just like the previous. We will follow in the same path. We respect its words. It’s the law of the land. President Obama was the Senator who voted in favour of the agreement. It’s the law of the land. The US has no capability, desire or intention. The Congress debated it at that time to stop anybody else from doing what is the law of their land,” Wisner said.

Former US President George W. Bush in December last year had signed into law a nuclear deal with India in a major step towards allowing New Delhi to buy U.S. reactors and fuel for the first time in 30 years.

The White House had pushed for the legislation, which was overwhelmingly approved by Congress this month, in a bid to expand ties with the world’s largest democracy and increase trade for U.S. companies.

The Bush administration said the pact will secure a strategic partnership with the world’s second most populous nation, help India meet rising energy demand and open a market worth billions.

For India, it capped a gradual rapprochement with the West since the days of socialist self-reliance, a process that began with economic reforms in the 1990s and has gathered pace with the spread of wealth and Western culture ever since.

India has a yawning energy deficit, and the accord opens up a market worth billions to U.S. companies such as General Electric GE.N and Westinghouse Electric, a unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corp. (ANI)