Singh wavered over N-deal: Rice
The Indo-US nuclear deal had virtually collapsed, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had told President George W Bush that it was not going to work and their entire administration had given up on it.
“I called the President (Bush). ‘It isn’t going to work. Singh just can’t make it happen,’ I said. ‘Too bad,’ he answered and didn’t press further. “Later that night Nick (Nicholas Burns, the then Under Secretary of State) called to tell me what I already knew – there wouldn’t be a deal,” writes Rice. She describes in detail in her forthcoming book ‘No Higher Honor’, the riveting hours before the joint statement made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush on July 18, 2005 on the framework for the agreement that almost brought the United Progressive Alliance-I government on the brink in July, 2008. The following is an excerpt.
“The foreign minister tried, but the prime minister just can’t sign on to the agreement,” Burns is quoted as telling Rice, after Natwar Singh made a final pitch for the agreement with the prime minister. As Rice woke up early on the morning of the Bush-Singh meeting, she was a bit tense but determined not to let the agreement fail. She made a final effort to personally meet the prime minister and pitch for the deal.
Rice writes, “I am not prepared to let this fail. ‘Arrange for me to see the Prime Minister’, I said. The meeting with the President was set for 10. ‘How about breakfast at eight?’ Nick called while I was exercising to say that the prime minister didn’t want to meet.
“‘Get the foreign minister,’ I answered. Natwar picked up the phone. My heart was beating pretty fast–may be from the exercise, may be from the sense of an important initiative slipping through my fingers. ‘Natwar, why won’t the PM see me?’”
“‘He doesn’t want to tell you no’, he (Natwar Singh) said. ‘I’ve done my best. I told him that the United States wants to take this thirty-year millstone from around your neck. You should do it. But he can’t sell it in New Delhi.’
