Appointment of Conferees On H.R. 5682, Henry J. Hyde United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006
APPOINTMENT OF CONFEREES ON H.R. 5682, HENRY J. HYDE UNITED STATES AND INDIA NUCLEAR COOPERATION PROMOTION ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - December 05, 2006)
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Motion to Instruct Conferees. The recommital motion I offered when this bill came to the floor in July would have required the President to certify that India is fully supporting U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The gentleman from California Mr. Lantos supported my amendment, and I thank him for that, but my amendment unfortunately failed.
In the Senate, a similar but less expansive amendment offered by Sen. Harkin was successful, and that is the amendment supported by this Motion to Instruct.
The Harkin Amendment would require the President to certify that India was abiding by United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iran. Since those resolutions are already binding under international law, that is a low enough bar that the President could make such a certification for almost any country in the world. India would certainly pass.
The Harkin Amendment doesn't do everything that I would like it to, but I believe that it is nonetheless an important provision to keep in the final bill.
But now the Bush Administration is objecting to even this modest requirement. Last week, Secretary Rice wrote to Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos asking that all of the significant nonproliferation provisions added by the Congress be removed. She also argued that the Harkin Amendment would be viewed by India as an ``additional condition,'' and therefore the requirement must be removed.
So it seems that the Bush administration is refusing to ask a close ally, India, to abide by established international law and assist in preventing Iran from going nuclear.
Apparently, the Bush Administration has entered the nuclear twilight zone. It can go to war in Iraq to disarm imaginary WMD, but not a word to India in this nuclear agreement about helping us stand up to Iran's WMD programs? I ask my colleagues: Whose foreign policy is the Administration promoting?
This is a modest suggestion. I think we actually should be doing more, and I and other House Members have sent a letter to Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos outlining some of the other critical nuclear nonproliferation provisions that are the minimum requirements that we should be including in this bill. I hope that they are included in the final conference report.
But we really do need to ensure that India is not able to simultaneously reap the benefits of nuclear cooperation with the U.S. and others, while continuing to support Iran's efforts to maintain a renegade nuclear program. I urge all of my colleagues to vote for this Motion to Instruct Conferees, because we absolutely must halt Iran's nuclear ambitions.
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