Speeches & Remarks 2008
Ambassador David Mulford
Press Conference
Roosevelt House
September 9, 2008
(AUDIO)
Ambassador Mulford: Good morning everybody, and thank you for coming to Roosevelt House.
This is one of these gatherings that we've had from time to time to keep you up to date with what's happening. As you all know, there's been a substantial shift by virtue of the fact that we've finally accomplished most of the goals that have been set since the civil nuclear deal was first declared by the President and the Prime Minister in July of 2005.
In fact, the initiative goes back to March of that year when Secretary Rice first indicated that the United States was willing to look at this initiative. As it was presented at that time, the President of the United States had indicated that the U.S. wished to help India in achieving its vision of becoming a world power and to that end would work to help remove some of the constraints on India's future growth, one of which was energy. An energy group was formed comprising five different segments. Among those was civil nuclear and that's where the original thrust came from. Then the declaration was made in Washington in July of '05, and you're well acquainted with all the steps that have been undertaken between then and now.
What I think is significant, first of all, is that this is a major accomplishment and triumph for India. It is a major accomplishment for the U.S. and India together. And it marks the end of India's years of isolation.
You've all seen now the full magnitude of the effort that was made in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but that's only been the most visible aspect. Some weeks ago there were press reports that the United States wasn't doing enough, that it was sitting on its hands, all of which were completely false. More recently there have been press reports to the effect that when the Berman material was released that somehow the United States was working against this deal or subverting it. All of this is utterly and totally false, and I want to just underline it.
The effort that was made in the NSG goes back a long time. It's the biggest diplomatic effort I have witnessed during my years in government which go back to the early 1980s. The effort that was made at senior levels of the United States government later in the process is appropriate in a situation like this where you're working with 45 countries and you're gradually moving towards a consensus. The President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor Mr. Hadley, Mr. Bill Burns, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the number three official in the State Department, all these people were hugely active in the final process and made direct phone calls and other contacts with many leaders around the world.
It was a subject of interest and discussion at the G8 in Japan. And there have been many other contacts over the months going back at least two or two and a half years in preparation for the ultimate need to accomplish this consensus. And a consensus of 45 countries in the kind of world in which we live is an extremely rare event, so I hope due respect is shown to this accomplishment.
We now are in the final phase where the 123 Agreement must be presented to the United States Congress. That process is ongoing at the moment, and we hope to get the legislation before the Congress in the next few days, and then we hope for action by the Congress in this Administration.
That concludes my opening remarks. I'd be happy to take questions.
Question: You were just discussing the second waiver that you will be seeking from the Congress before the 30 day limit. What are the chances of this passing? There have to be two amendments [Inaudible]. If you can also explain the process, to clarify it?
Ambassador Mulford: The legislation will be placed by the Administration before the Congress and only then will we begin to get a response out of the Congress about exactly how and whether in this session they will be willing to address this issue.
Question: Has it already been placed?
Ambassador Mulford: No, it has not yet been placed. That will happen very shortly, but it has not yet been placed.
Question: There has to be a Presidential Determination?
Ambassador Mulford: There are Presidential Determinations that need to be completed, and that work is going forward at the moment. As Minister Mukherjee mentioned, there are certain documents that are required to be done, and we're in the process of completing these, and we expect this to be accomplished in the next day or two.
Until the legislation is lodged with the Congress, we won't really have a definitive view of what their approach is going to be.
It is important to remember that in the United States form of government, the Congress is a separate and independent branch of government. The Congress is a sovereign body and it will decide itself how it is going to proceed.
You're aware that there is a rule in the Senate, a 30-day rule. That is a rule which traditionally can be waived, but if it is waived then it opens up the possibility of any single senator being able to filibuster against whatever the measure is, and that's not something that people want to open up to usually, so it's very seldom used. So, nobody knows at this point exactly what judgments will be forthcoming.
What one can say about the Congress is that it has a relatively small body of key leaders, and therefore it has been possible from time to time in the past for consultations with leadership that have resulted in quite flexible responses to things, and even changing rules or taking a special approach. So virtually anything is possible, but you have to begin the engagement process to find out exactly what might be.
That's as much as one can say about it until we've actually lodged the legislation. But an effort is already underway at senior levels in the Administration, once again, to dialogue with members of Congress on the leadership side to see what course may be adopted.
Question: The 123 Agreement that was agreed upon between the two countries, can it be amended?
Ambassador Mulford: No, in the Congress it's an up or down vote, so it will be on the basis of the 123 Agreement as it is. Again, nobody is quite able to judge yet what the attitude of Congressional leaders will be to an agreement which closely follows legislation that was voted on overwhelmingly by both parties in 2006. Will they want to review it in depth? Will they say this meets the terms that were set out and therefore it will be a straight-forward process? It's hard to say until we get the legislation and have studied it.
Question: What is your view on China's role in this?
Ambassador Mulford: My view is that China in the end did the right thing. Period.
Question: Two questions. One, how confident is the administration that the Congress will approve? Second, I believe that the Government of India will take up the fuel supply issues with Washington. Have they done so yet?
Ambassador Mulford: On the first question, you'll have to await the judgment of Congress about whether and to what extent the 123 Agreement that actually is submitted in their view complies with the Hyde Act. That's a congressional judgment. It's their prerogative. It wouldn't be right for me to make their judgment for them. That's what they'll have to do in reaching an agreement about how they vote.
I'm confident and optimistic that the bipartisan majorities that we saw at the time of the votes are still intact. I think you could see that in the statements that Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama both made, so that would seem to still be a situation where the majorities are intact.
On the other question, I think it's important to go back on this fuel assurance question because one does keep reading about it in the newspapers here. It is a very straightforward issue. The fuel assurances are contained in the language of the 123 Agreement. Those words were negotiated by and signed off on by the President and the Prime Minister in March of 2006. They were employed word for word in the 123 Agreement. So those are the fuel assurances. There are no other fuel assurances. That is where you look to get your answer, and I don't know of anybody in New Delhi who is raising this issue with Washington.
Question: External Affairs Minister Mukherjee said yesterday that he would like to wait for the 123 Agreement before making bilateral agreements with other countries, but if the 123 doesn't make it through the U.S. Congress there are other countries like Russia, for example, or France, that are very keen to do nuclear business with India. How does the U.S. look at that?
Ambassador Mulford: You're asking me a speculative question. The situation is rather precisely as Mr. Mukherjee put it. So that's your answer.
Question: Could you give us the flavor of the conversation between President Bush and President Putin?
Ambassador Mulford: No. I'm not in a position to do that. We don't talk about the content of Presidential conversations with individual statesmen around the world.
Question: Was it the President who swung China's vote?
Ambassador Mulford: I wasn't there at the time, and I don't know the answer to that. I have already said they did the right thing in the end.
Question: Can you say who President Bush spoke to?
Ambassador Mulford: Maybe the White House would like to issue a long list, but I don't know that I would.
Question: The Prime Minister is going to Washington in September. Do you think the bilateral 123 agreement will be signed in Washington after the Congress acts if it goes through?
Ambassador Mulford: I don't know the answer to that. I'm presuming if it's passed by the Congress it's an opportunity certainly to sign it, but nothing has been decided and announced.
You can understand that, if you have worked and lived in Washington, to presume on the Congress is not something you do. The Congress is going to make its own decisions and move at its own pace and make its own decisions. Until they do that we're going to be respectfully waiting to see what their approach is, but there will be dialogue at senior levels in the administration with senior leadership in the Congress. It's already started.
Question: I wanted to ask you how you see overall U.S India political relations developing?
Ambassador Mulford: I see them as developing in a very positive fashion as they already have in the past four or five years. I think this development will continue. I think the civil nuclear accomplishment makes that easier and probably cements the relationship in a number of important ways.
Question: Will there be more defense cooperation?
Ambassador Mulford: I'm including that in the answer. I think we already have a very strong relationship in the defense area. It's been getting stronger. We expect that to continue. The Indian Defense Minister is in Washington today. We've seen all kinds of positive developments in that field since the visit of Mr. Mukherjee back in June of 2005 when he visited prior to a Prime Ministerial visit a few weeks later, and he signed the Defense Framework Agreement at that point. So developments over the last three years have been very positive and continue to be so.
Question: There is talk that China looking for a similar deal for Pakistan. How do you see this? Is there a possibility?
Ambassador Mulford: I don't think there is, no. No possibility.
Question: There has been, post NSG waiver, differing opinions about whether it's really got through with all that India and America wanted. Then you had the opposition in India saying it's look at the restrictions have been put on us, I think.
Can you just go over some of these things? What is it that makes you say it's clean?
Ambassador Mulford: The waiver that was granted is a clean waiver.
Question: When you say clean, what in your definition was that clean?
Ambassador Mulford: I never defined it. [Laughter].
Question: So how do you say it's clean?
Ambassador Mulford: It's a clean waiver. That's the great beauty of it.
Question: What were the key points that are put in that to make sure that wouldn't crimp the agreement that the U.S. and India have?
Ambassador Mulford: You have to ask the people who were involved. The consensus was achieved, the parties all agreed, and therefore I don't see that there's a problem. The waiver seems to me to be a straight forward, clean document. But as I've always said, I think you have to look at this deal not just in terms of that waiver, but in terms of all the surrounding elements of the deal.
There's the declaration that was made in July of 2005; there's the separation agreement that was negotiated between India and the United States. India's separation agreement, I should say. There was the Hyde Act. There's the 123 Agreement. There's the IAEA Safeguards Agreement. There are elements of the presidential determinations that touch on various issues. There is the exemption itself. There will be a final vote in the U.S. Congress. One has to look at this thing, as indeed it is, which is a very large, broad-based initiative with many moving parts which has made it complex and difficult to manage over a long period of time.
But frankly, it's a great tribute to everybody who's been involved on both the Indian side and the U.S. side, and now more recently all the other countries that have been involved as well, that everybody has worked together to accomplish what is for India, and the world, a very significant event.
India is no longer isolated. India is able to deal with the United States in civil nuclear commerce as well as with the rest of the world. It has positive environmental implications for the world. It allows India to diversify its energy base. It permits India to develop energy sources that will promote its long-term growth. It will help India to become an increasingly important world power. It will provide electricity in a larger scale more efficiently, more cleanly and more cheaply to the people of India. It is a history-making event. I think one needs to keep it in that broad context.
Question: If this is still pending when the new government takes office how far back in the procedure do you have to go to resume that process, and how long will that take?
Ambassador Mulford: One cannot speak on behalf of a new Congress and a new Administration, but I think that having gotten to the point where the international consensus has been accomplished and the legislation has been presented to the U.S. Congress, the prospects for the content of this deal being preserved in its presentation to a new Congress are greatly enhanced.
Also because all the various steps have been accomplished now, there is very considerable prospect that the Congress would act much earlier than otherwise would have been the case if these things had not been done. I think one can at least take the view that as long as this level of accomplishment has been achieved and the legislation has been put before the Congress, there's every reason to think that in the new administration there would be a similar approach relatively early. But you cannot guarantee that.
Question: And how would you define relatively earlier?
Ambassador Mulford: I can't say exactly what the congressional schedule might be.
Question: Two to three months or two to three weeks?
Ambassador Mulford: I think it would be a longer period than that because it takes a long time for an administration to get set up, make its appointments, and deal with its first and most urgent business. I wouldn't want to comment.
Question: This is clearly a huge milestone for U.S.-India relations. What's next?
Ambassador Mulford: What's next? That's a good question, and I want to answer that in a very particular way because I have always tried to convey the vision of the United States that this relationship with India is a comprehensive relationship. It touches every aspect of life between the two countries. It's very heavily people to people. It's very heavily a civil, private sector relationship. And those elements of the relationship are growing on a regular basis. So if you look at things like health care cooperation, education, energy and various other areas besides civil nuclear. If you look at space cooperation, economic relations, foreign direct investment, USAID activities, you get some impression of the breadth of the interface.
Things have been going on in every single one of those fields. The United States Mission in India is now the largest Mission the United States has in the world. So while this has been going on every week, every month, with contacts and developments and programmatic cooperation, the civil nuclear issue has tended to take the oxygen out of most other things because there's been a sort of preoccupation with that.
What happens next is that we will now see a little more visibly the full breadth of the relationship, and I think and I hope there will be a focus on these things because they're so exciting and so much is being accomplished.
Question: Do you see more cooperation on the space technology?
Ambassador Mulford: I've always thought that in the areas where there are sensitive aspects of the relationship, usually high tech issues, defense issues and other things, the civil nuclear relationship, once that is established, it is so central and so sensitive itself that it should have a knock-on effect that's positive into other areas.
I would expect that our capacity to move forward in other complex areas is enhanced because there is a continual building up of trust and confidence in each other, a willingness to change things, and relax old restrictions on both sides. Because it is really about building trust and cooperation on both sides of the ledger. This should enhance that process very significantly.
Question: Can you give some examples of restrictions, or objections which we had on both sides, which you'll see dissolving?
Ambassador Mulford: I think we will continue to see closer defense cooperation. There are a number of high tech issues that feature in that relationship. Those are presumably going to be easier to move forward and resolve with the confidence that's been built here. Compared, say, to if this deal had failed and everybody was unhappy about the fact that we hadn't completed it. That might have had a reverse affect. But I think the knock-on positive effect is going to be very significant.
Question: If the 123 Agreement is not approved in September, is there a likelihood of a special session in the next couple of months?
Ambassador Mulford: There is a history of what are called lame duck sessions of Congress in the United States, but they are strictly within the control of the leadership of the Congress to decide. Up until now, the leadership has not decided and announced that there will be a lame duck session. Quite the reverse, there have been rumors that there will not be. That's the present state of play.
The answer is, nothing has been said. Rumors say no, but it is a possibility and it could be announced at some point. So in a way it probably depends to some extent on how the election comes out.
But bear in mind that lame duck sessions of Congress in the past are usually called for fairly specific purposes, to deal with certain pieces of legislation. They are not simply open sessions. So if that happened, there would have to be both a decision to have a lame duck and also the understanding that this is something that would be considered.
Question: Two quick questions. Coming back to that Berman letter, you issued a statement after that letter came out saying that the Indian government always knew what was in it. Indian officials say that was not true. How would you respond to that? Secondly, if India wanted to begin civil nuclear trade with Russia or France right away, would that be okay with the U.S.?
Ambassador Mulford: I think Mr. Mukherjee answered that, and I already answered it. He's correct, that's the expectation as he's put it.
The other question was on the Berman letter. What I meant when I issued that statement was that there has been complete transparency between all the parties. I think it's important to understand that the letter that was produced was to Congressman Lantos, and it was at the request of Chairman Lantos and the committee. This is common. Whenever there's legislation in the U.S. or hearings or issues that come up, the Congress often asks the Executive Branch questions. Sometimes those are verbal questions in the form of testimony at hearings; or sometimes they're written requests. Often the written requests will come after testimony.
The answers to the questions that were produced by the State Department were not classified. They were not secret. One keeps reading in the press here they were secret. They were not secret. They were unclassified information. Under our form of government when we respond to questions to the Congress, that becomes the property of the committee. They decide if they're going to release it to the public or not. In this case Chairman Lantos decided not to at that time. Chairman Berman decided later that he would release it. But there is nothing in there that is new or unknown to the various parties who have been negotiating. The Indian government said so itself in its own statement.
Question: But Dr. Kokodkar also said they didn't know what was in those letters. My question is, your statement seemed to indicate that the government here did know what was in --
Ambassador Mulford: No, in a sense you're correct there. We did not take the questions at the time and give the material to the Indian government. What I meant to say is that the content of the material in there was known. There's nothing in there that isn't known to the Indian government. But the text of the answers was a matter between the State Department and the committee. It's strictly speaking a U.S. government process, it's an internal process. It's not an external process. But the content of what was in there was nothing new for anybody.
Question: Will there be changes to the entities list with regard to India?
Ambassador Mulford: No. First of all you remember the NSSP initiative. That initiative had the affect through negotiations to remove the need for export licenses, as I remember, from being required on about 25 percent of the high tech items that were exported to India, to less than one percent. So a great deal has already been done there.
There are other areas of sophisticated technology involved in defense equipment where there is a releasability issue that is the subject of decisions in the U.S. administration over the specific type of equipment that's involved. And those are based partly on the laws, partly on procedures and policies. It's a very complex area. What I said before is I think you could see greater openness in that area going forward. That doesn't mean all the regulations disappear.
Thanks for coming.