(From top) Deora, Shinde, Sibal: Garnering support

Washington, April 9: As members of the US Congress went home to their constituencies this weekend for Easter recess with the Indo-US nuclear legislation still on their minds, a steady trickle of Indian politicians into Washington is dramatically altering the perceptions of American legislators on the fallout of the bilateral deal.

Many US Senators and members of the House of Representatives no longer consider the nuclear agreement primarily as an issue of non-proliferation.

On the contrary, they are now looking at it essentially as an issue linked to the US’s energy security.

Visiting Indian politicians are quietly telling their US counterparts that if Delhi does not get the technology to build nuclear power plants, its demand for oil will have the ripple effect of further pushing up petrol prices in American pumps.

If this argument takes root in the minds of Americans and holds until legislators here vote on the bill to implement the nuclear deal, it will be a serious setback to the non-proliferation lobby’s well-orchestrated campaign to kill the bill in Congress.

Petroleum minister Murli Deora, who arrived here on March 29 and returned home during the weekend, appears to have played a major role in changing the perception of several US legislators.

Deora had meetings with 11 senators and members of the House of Representatives. Encouraged by the response to his meetings, Deora extended his stay by a day.

One of the senators who met Deora was Pete Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico. He is a sponsor of the bill in the Senate, where its prime mover, Senator Richard Lugar, found it difficult to get even a single co-sponsor when he tabled it last month.

Deora also met Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida, who was opposed to the bill.

After meeting the Indian minister, she announced her support for the deal, though, like other American legislators who owe their allegiance to the Jewish lobby, she still has reservations about India’s relations with Iran.

Ros-Lehtinen’s earlier opposition to the deal has been a matter of acute embarrassment to India and Indian-Americans because she is co-chair of the India Caucus on the Capitol Hill.

Deora also met Gary Ackerman, a veteran supporter of Israel and India in the House of Representatives.

Ackerman is said to have done some plain-speaking with Deora, some of which he separately outlined at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee on the nuclear deal on Wednesday.

Ackerman told the committee that President George W. Bush should “personally take ownership of this issue to see if he can get the American people’s support” for the nuclear deal.

“Will he (Bush) address the American people on the issue?” Ackerman asked secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at the hearing.

Deora gave no commitment on Iran to anyone who raised Indo-Iranian relations at his meetings here, but enigmatically told all his American interlocutors that dealings with Iran are “primarily in the hands of my ministry”.

That appears to have given him considerable leverage among American legislators and officials. Bush’s nuclear negotiator with India, Nicholas Burns, called on the minister at his hotel.

Complementing Deora’s meetings has been Kapil Sibal, the minister for science and technology, who arrived in the US on Tuesday and will stay an entire week in New York, Washington and Chicago. Sibal has considerable influence among members of the US House of Representatives because he was a popular co-chair of the Indo-US Parliamentary Forum until he became a minister.

The minister for power, Sushil Kumar Shinde, will also spend one week in Washington, New York and Chicago later this month.

Much is also expected from a visit later in the month by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, who is the primary coordinator for Indo-US economic relations.

Ahluwalia hopes to shore up conservative support here for the deal by following foreign secretary Shyam Saran’s lead in speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, which is now the refuge for several neo-conservatives, discredited by Bush’s misadventure in Iraq.