Washington, Oct. 10: While India’s politicians are quarrelling over the nuclear deal, US legislators opposed to it have made their first move to take advantage of the situation and put the clock back on Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation.

A resolution now under consideration by the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs wants the US to immediately freeze any attempt by Washington to change the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in favour of India.

The resolution, of which the full House was notified last week, says NSG guidelines should not be changed until the Bush administration has “answered all outstanding questions raised by Congress regarding apparent inconsistencies” between the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement subsequently negotiated between New Delhi and Washington.

The resolution also expresses concern over the differing interpretations of the deal by the White House and the UPA government and seeks to stop its operationalisation pending a satisfactory conclusion “with the Government of India (of) all differences of interpretation of the provisions in the nuclear cooperation agreement”.

If the resolution, which has been referred to the committee on foreign affairs, moves forward, it will add fuel to the political fire in India arising from the opposition to the deal from the Left parties, the BJP and others.

The resolution rattled the state department enough to prompt its spokesperson yesterday to say on record that “we are going to keep working with not only those two representatives (who are co-sponsors of the resolution) but others in the Congress to move forward on this deal”.

Sean McCormack said those who have given notice of the resolution “are important voices and they have raised some issues. And we want to... engage them to be able to reassure them of the importance of this deal, not only for the US government but for our non-proliferation efforts worldwide”.

The resolution has equally unnerved Indian officials and supporters of the deal within the Indian-American community here because one of its co-sponsors is Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She is not only not anti-Indian, but until recently, she was co-chair of the India Caucus on Capitol Hill.

Her seeming betrayal of the India Caucus’s efforts to see the nuclear deal through comes close on the heels of a revelation by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar that presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton had told him the deal was a “sellout” of US interests and that Democrats would junk it if they were voted to power in 2008.

It is not unlikely that the resolution may be killed by the House Committee, but that requires mobilising supporters of the deal here.

The controversy in India about the deal has made that effort more challenging than before. The sponsor of the resolution, Democrat Howard Berman, has cleverly tabled it as a “sense of the House” measure. It will be non-binding.

Because it is non-binding, it may attract the support of legislators who are sitting on the fence because they value Indo-US relations in its totality, even though they have reservations about the deal. Such support and its adoption will then embolden the opponents of the nuclear deal to make another attempt to kill it.

The resolution says the Bush administration “should not support a proposed exemption for India in the NSG guidelines that is not consistent with the Hyde Act”.

It also calls for “the immediate termination of all nuclear commerce by NSG member states if India detonates a nuclear explosive device or if the IAEA has determined that India has violated its international safeguards commitments”.

Opponents of the deal had hitherto demanded such measures by the US. Clearly, they are now widening their targets to include 45 member-states of the NSG who control global nuclear commerce. The resolution also calls for restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing activities by India.