WASHINGTON: The US Congress will not have time to approve a landmark civilian nuclear agreement with India at the centre of a bitter Indian political row, a key US lawmaker on South Asian affairs said on Tuesday.

“The clock has run out on our side of the border, because the clock has run out on their side,” said Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.

“They’re not going to be able to do it in time for us to act in this calendar year and certainly not during President Bush’s administration,” he said by telephone from Pakistan on a trip that will take him to India this week.

The pact, signed by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the White House in 2005, would give India access to US nuclear fuel and technology the country had been denied after its 1974 nuclear bomb test.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), one of four leftist parties supporting Singh’s coalition government, has threatened to halt their crucial support for the ruling coalition in parliament if Singh moves ahead with a deal they say will make India a pawn of Washington.

Months of wrangling in India have held up a pact that still needs time-consuming clearances from the International Atomic Energy Agency and 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and then would have to go to the US Congress for final approval.

Ackerman’s comments were the most explicit of a series of statements by lawmakers and officials that time was running out ahead of US congressional and presidential elections in November and the inauguration of Bush’s successor in January.

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY?: On Monday, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters the United States understood the political difficulties in India over the agreement.

“We have our own political calendar too, and our own legislative calendar, and it’s very difficult, at this point, to assume that we could be able to get an agreement through (Congress) but certainly we’ll make every effort,” he said.

Some experts were less inclined to rule out movement than Ackerman, who said he would tell his Indian hosts he remained committed to helping India with its energy needs but that the effort faced anti-nuclear sentiment in Congress.

“We never thought that the Bush people would produce something like this, or that the Indians would agree to it ... and I never say never,” said Stephen Cohen, an India expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Some estimates say India’s goal of increasing tenfold its output of nuclear power in coming decades will create between $60 billion and $100 billion in business for US, European and Japanese nuclear supplier companies.

India watchers in the United States say far more is at stake than engineering and fuel supply contracts or even the better bilateral relations the pact is supposed to cement.

“It’s not just about relations with the US; It’s about India taking its place on the world stage,” said Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Both Cohen and Curtis said a setback to the nuclear deal would not derail bilateral ties. But in addition to the time needed for a transition to a new US administration, Bush’s successor might pause before going to bat for India again.

“It was an enormous amount of work simply to get the deal done and get it through Congress, and then to have the Indians either reject it or go slow on it so that it doesn’t get done this Congress is going to make the next undersecretary of state think several times before engaging in long, complex negotiations with New Delhi,” said Cohen.—Reuters