Another killer amendment to the nuclear bill introduced by United States Senator Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, was today defeated by the Senate 59 to 38.
Yet again, Senator Hillary Clinton was among those who voted for it.
In a last ditch effort to save her amendment just before the vote, Senator Boxer pleaded that "the least we can do is to ask India to not have military to military ties with Iran -- the Iran which is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism, which is providing the IEDs which are killing our soldiers in Iraq."
She had also earlier argued that the Indo-US nuclear deal could help India increase its nuclear weapons arsenal from six nuclear weapons a year to 50 a year.
Boxer said at the time President Bush was visiting India to sign the nuclear deal, two Iranian warships were berthed in India's Southern Command. "The fact that India would conduct training exercises with the world's great sponsor of terrorism while the President is visiting India is simply unbelievable."
"Don't you think if we are giving India this deal, the least they can do is not have military relations with Iran which is sponsoring the death and destruction of our sons and daughters," she reiterated, hammering away at this point.
But Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the India Nuclear Agreement, argued for the amendment's rejection, noting that India was the only country in the Non-Aligned Movement to vote to refer Iran to the United Natoins Security Council for its clandestine nuclear weapons programme. He warned that if this amendment is adopted, the US-India civilian nuclear agreement would be "kaput."
More from rediff