India on par with 5 N-states

3 Oct 2008, 0352 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN WASHINGTON: The US President is expected to sign the N-deal bill into law, possibly as early as Thursday or Friday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford University provost who scripted the Bush administration’s strategic shift towards India that led to the deal, will arrive in New Delhi on Saturday to sign the inter-governmental instruments that will operationalise the deal. Expectedly, the non-proliferation lobby and lawmakers echoing their view fulminated in defeat, lending some colour and drama to an otherwise one-sided debate. One Senator, North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan, invoked CIA spooks and loose nukes with the help of crude charts and newspaper clippings to drum up a scare scenario, but found little traction among his colleagues. In the end, the most... [read full story]