Nuke ayatollah Tauscher softens N-tone

Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher started the senate confirmation on Thursday for a key state department position by facing questions about the Obama administration’s emerging arms-control strategy and its vision of a future free of nuclear weapons.

The centrist Democrat and seven-term Congress member is a known quantity on Capitol Hill. After the Nuclear Supplier Group’s decision to lift a 34-year global ban on nuclear trade with India, Tauscher had slammed the India nuclear energy deal as a “dangerous precedent that would be impossible to erase.”

Alarm bells rang in New Delhi as soon as she was in the hot seat for a key state department post but Tauscher appears to have softened her tone. Tauscher told the senate that the US expects to reach an agreement with India on reprocessing of fuel by August of next year.

“We expect to complete negotiations with India and reach agreement on reprocessing related arrangements and procedures within the 12 months time period allowed for negotiations as set forth in Article 6(iii) (of the 123 agreement),” Tauscher said at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  She said negotiations on a reprocessing agreement, part of operationalising the nuclear deal, were likely to start before August 2. India insisted on the reprocessing agreement to ensure that it would have a fall back if America suddenly snapped fuel supplies to its civilian reactors. Tauscher said in her hearing, that the entire process of implementing the deal would be completed a year from now. India will be happy to hear her positive remarks given the snails pace, and bureaucratic delays that have prevented US firms from selling nuclear technology to India so far. India requested to start negotiations on the agreement in February but didn’t get much traction until now.

“We have acknowledged the Indian request and have affirmed our intention to begin consultations within the six-month period referenced in Article 6(iii) that is by August 2, 2009,” said Tauscher. “Once we have an inter-agency agreement on a proposed text, and have consulted with the IAEA on its needs, we will forward a draft text to the Indian side for comment and will offer to open consultations on a specific date.”

Tauscher is widely expected to be confirmed as the under secretary of state for arms control and international security. She will become a leading adviser to president Obama and secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on a wide variety of arms control issues.