WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Congress Wednesday that altering a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India could destroy a new partnership being built with the Asian giant.
US lawmakers are reportedly sceptical about the deal clinched by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on March 2 because New Delhi has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has developed nuclear weapons.
But Rice, speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, pushed lawmakers to endorse the deal for energy-starved India to gain access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing a majority of its nuclear reactors under international inspection.
"What would happen if this initiative were defeated or changed in a way that fundamentally alters its substance?" she asked.
"All the hostility and suspicion of the past would be redoubled," she said, recalling Cold War tensions, when relations were "bedeviled" and there was "structural ambivalence" between the world`s largest and oldest democracies.
Rice said a failed nuclear deal would also "hand the enemies of this new relationship a great victory. We would slide backward, when we should be striding forward," she said.
04/05/2006 14:56 GMT