With just over a year due for the next Lok Sabha elections, the ruling UPA’s landmark nuclear deal with the US is in danger of floundering, as a top American diplomat said that the agreement might lapse if it is not operationalised by the year-end.

“If this is not processed in the present (US) Congress it is unlikely that this deal will be offered again to India. It certainly would not be revived and offered by any administration, Democratic or Republican, before the year 2010, which is after the life of this administration (Manmohan Singh government) in India,” US Ambassador David C Mulford told in an interview to private TV channel CNN-IBN.

The Ambassador’s hints of the deal coming unstuck came in the backdrop of the Manmohan Singh government’s protracted negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the mandatory India-specific nuclear safeguards agreement. The agreement is a must before the Bush Administration moves the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) for waiver of its guidelines required to operationalise the Indo-US deal.

Mulford also said that it would not be “easy” for the US to quickly get the NSG waiver as some NSG members were reluctant to make any compromise on their non-proliferation commitments. But he hoped the US would be able to prevail over the members to get a “clean” waiver.

‘Puzzling’

About the delay in proceeding with the processes like negotiating the IAEA safeguards agreement, the Ambassador said the US was “puzzled” by India’s approach as the deal was “India’s passport to the world”. And, according to him, if the deal did not come through, it would also affect the evolving “trust and discretion” in Indo-US relations, though it would not damage the relationship.