NEW YORK; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s six-day US visit opened on an auspicious note on Tuesday with the Indo-US nuclear deal inching a step closer to approval by the American Congress.



An hour after the PM and his entourage settled into the luxe New York Palace Hotel news trickled in that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday voted 19-2 in favour of legislation. The deal now moves to the Senate floor.



“Today’s committee passage is significant, but several steps remain before this bill becomes law. I hope Congress can complete the job in the few days remaining before adjournment, and I’ll continue fighting as hard as I can to achieve this important victory,” said Senator Joseph Biden, Democratic candidate for vice president. The Senate goes into recess on September 26 for the presidential polls.

Senator Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the panel, echoed: “I am confident that we have cooperation from the Bush administration and a strong bipartisan team in Congress to complete action on the bill this year.”



It’s unclear whether the full Congress will follow suit and vote in the week ahead before wrapping up for the year to campaign for the November polls. The White House had hoped to have the deal in the bag before Singh’s visit to Washington on Thursday but officials have been managing expectations ever since the implosion on Wall Street subsumed the Congress.



Singh, a hardboiled pragmatist, is hardly prone to dreaming about pies in the sky but this hasn’t stopped him from taking an optimistic tack: “As I have said before, in politics we have to learn to live with disappointments. But we have not reached that point yet. I am still hopeful that this will happen.”



The PM has reason to be optimistic as the Congress is toying with the idea of extending its session beyond September 26 to approve an emergency 700-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout. That would give the House a week more to circle on a day to consider the Indian nuclear deal.



Advocates of the nuclear deal told DNA the Congressional business committee is also weighing in on whether there will be a separate or joint resolution of Congress to approve the 123 Agreement by a simple up-and-down vote.



Meanwhile, in a farewell speech to the 192-member UN General Assembly, Bush assured worried world leaders that his administration and the Congress would approve an emergency 700-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout “in the urgent time frame required.”

Bush also held his first face-to-face talks with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday amid strained ties. Zardari stressed in a US television interview that Pakistan’s military was better able to capture terrorists along its lawless border with Afghanistan than US forces.



The White House is re-calibrating its blind dependence on Pakistan’s military to win the war on terror. Bush is expected to discuss a more active Indian role in the region when he meets Singh. The Indian PM is meeting Zardari on Wednesday evening and he is expected to take up India’s concerns about the violation of the ceasefire along the India-Pakistan borders.



Singh will meet World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick on Wednesday morning and later enjoy what has grown into a ritual power-lunch with CEOs of top American companies. They are likely to press Singh who is the architect of India’s 1991 free-market reforms for better infrastructure and market access. Nuclear technology sales will figure in the luncheon meeting.



Singh will also meet Republican presidential candidate John McCain and talk to Democrat Barack Obama over the telephone. In an attempt to shrug off the perception that she is an international affairs ingénue, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will meet both Singh and Zardari. Singh will also meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday to get past the NSG brouhaha. He will also meet Britain’s Gordon Brown and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi.



The PM’s daughter Amrit Singh, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union actively fighting Bush policies, will bury her politics for a day to accompany her father to a glittering White House dinner. Finance Minister Chidambaram who is here for a UN meeting is also invited to the banquet.

