US hopes India will complete internal processes

Ahead of his visit to New Delhi next week, senior US Congressman Gary Ackerman has said he looked forward to Indian government completing its "internal processes" on the historic nuclear deal so that the accord can be approved by the American Congress.
Maintaining that it would be foolish to squander away the gains in the bilateral relationship of the last decade, especially over the last three years, the New York Democrat, who is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Sub Committee on Middle East and South Asia, said he strongly supported the 123 Agreement, which will operationalise the nuclear deal.
"...I strongly support the 123 agreement and I look forward to the Government of India completing its internal processes so that the US Congress can give final approval to this historic deal," he said.
However, he said "there was much more to the July 2005 joint statement (between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W Bush) than civil nuclear cooperation and there is much more to US-India relations than just the 123 agreement."
"In fact the 2005 statement covered a broad range of issues among which civil nuclear cooperation was just one," Democratic Congressman Ackerman said at a hearing titled 'More Than Just The 123 Agreement: The Future of US-Indo Relations.'
Ackerman, whose remarks came amid the UPA-left deadlock over the nuclear deal, will be in New Delhi between July 2 and 4 even as sequencing of his overall five-nation trip that will also take him to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan and Afghanistan is still being worked out, sources told PTI.