WASHINGTON — Reversing three decades of U.S. policies intended to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, Congress early today approved a long-stalled agreement giving India access to American nuclear technology with limited safeguards to discourage possible proliferation.
The House of Representatives passed the measure, 330 to 59, Friday night, and senators voted unanimously in favor of the deal shortly before 3 a.m. President Bush, who finalized the terms of the agreement during a visit to India in March, is expected to sign it quickly.
The pact would lift a U.S. moratorium on nuclear cooperation with a nation that has developed atomic weapons and has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970. But Bush and supporters of the agreement argue that it marks a crucial advance in restricting nuclear weapons because it permits international inspectors to examine most of India's civilian nuclear reactors for the first time.
In addition, they say that opening India's nuclear industry to $100 billion in potential sales from abroad will help cement a relationship with a developing economic power that may also serve as a hedge against the growing clout of China in Asia.
Critics argued that by allowing India's nuclear arsenal to keep growing and keeping some of its facilities off-limits, the pact establishes a double standard and sets conditions under which treaty violations would be tolerated.
"Such a policy unravels years of successful U.S. diplomatic efforts to convince countries that the benefits of surrendering the right to develop nuclear weapons outweighed the risk of staying outside the treaty and pursuing a nuclear weapons option," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard Jr., a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington think tank.
The deal now faces at least two additional hurdles. A treaty putting the provisions into effect will require Senate ratification, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, 45 nations that control exports of nuclear materials, also must approve the pact.
The suppliers group was formed in 1974 after India conducted a nuclear test.
Over months of debate, the measure's proponents were able to turn back fears that the accord would fuel a nuclear arms race in South Asia and that the United States was weakening its hand in seeking to restrict nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea.
