Bush to Push Nuclear Deal With India

President Bush promised today to lobby U.S. lawmakers to permit the United States to provide India with updated technology for its nuclear power programs.

Today’s announcement followed a July 2005 agreement that would permit India to expand its nuclear energy programs while agreeing to international monitoring of its military nuclear programs.

Negotiators from both countries had failed to work out details of the deal and there was widespread hope in India that Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would do so during Bush’s visit.

Specifics were scarce as Bush and Singh appeared at a press conference after talks this morning. The deal was the centerpiece of Bush’s visit to the region, which will take him next to Pakistan.

At the joint appearance on the nuclear pact, Bush also announced that an American foreign service officer was among four people killed in a bombing near the U.S. Consulate this morning in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. He said it would not change his plans to fly to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Friday night.

The nuclear agreement would require a change in U.S. law because India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Bush conceded that convincing some members of Congress would be difficult but called the pact necessary.

“Short-term history shows that the U.S. and India were divided.... What this agreement says is that things change. Times change,” he said.

Some in Congress say that the agreement would inflame a nuclear arms race in South Asia and send a bad signal to other nations that have not signed the nonproliferation treaty.

On Wednesday, Bush paid an unannounced visit to Afghanistan and declared that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and former Taliban ruler Mullah Mohammed Omar would eventually be apprehended.

“It’s not a matter of if they’re captured or brought to justice, it’s when they’re brought to justice,” Bush said during a four-hour stop en route to long-planned state visits in India and Pakistan.

It was Bush’s first visit to Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bin Laden and Omar have been in hiding since the war.

Unlike the president’s trip to Iraq for Thanksgiving dinner in 2003, for which a news blackout was imposed until he had left the country, Wednesday’s visit to Afghanistan was more high-profile. Bush appeared at a televised outdoor news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, gave an address to U.S. Embassy staff and spoke to cheering troops with wife Laura and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice beside him.

The symbolism was clear: Bush was seeking to showcase a new democracy. But armed helicopters buzzed overhead during the news conference, occasionally drowning out the leaders’ words; and the latest remarks on capturing Bin Laden illustrated the challenges that remained in a country struggling with insurgent attacks and a growing drug trade.

Bush’s visit came in the same week that the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from a U.S. intelligence official that insurgent violence in Afghanistan had risen 20% in the last year, putting the Afghan government in greater danger than at any point since Karzai first became president in June 2002.

Bush’s remarks on Bin Laden and Omar were unusually strong, reminiscent of the early days after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon when he vowed that the U.S. would catch the Al Qaeda leader “dead or alive.”

With Bin Laden and his top allies eluding capture, Bush has since generally avoided making such pledges. Officials believe the fugitives are hiding in the rugged mountains near the Pakistani-Afghan border.

But Wednesday, Bush did not refrain from mentioning Bin Laden or Omar by name and almost promising their capture. His comments seemed intended to affirm U.S. commitments to maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan even as administration officials talk about reducing the 19,000-strong troop deployment.

Bush did not give a direct answer when an Afghan reporter asked him to comment on the “worsening situation” in Afghanistan. But the president did say that the U.S. was receiving cooperation in its search for Bin Laden and his associates. The hunt is a joint effort among several nations in the region, Bush said, while underscoring his intention to nudge Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to stop militants from crossing into Afghanistan.

“I am confident [Bin Laden] will be brought to justice,” said Bush, who is scheduled to meet with Musharraf over the weekend after visiting India. “What’s happening is, is that we got U.S. forces on the hunt for not only Bin Laden, but anybody who plots and plans with Bin Laden.”

The Afghanistan trip comes at a time when violence has soared in Iraq and new polls show declining support for the president’s performance and the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

A survey released this week by CBS News found that 34% of Americans approve of Bush’s job performance, and half of those surveyed disapproved of his handling of terrorism -- the issue that has long been the president’s strongest suit. In recent days the Bush administration has been criticized by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers over its approval of a deal that will give a state-owned Arab company control of operations at several major U.S. ports. Critics say the deal is a risk to national security.

Karzai gushed with enthusiasm for the U.S. president, crediting Bush with pushing Afghanistan toward peace and democracy and thanking him for “the way you have given your hand to the Afghan people.”

Bush said it was the United States’ “pleasure and honor to be involved with the future of this country.”

“We like stories of young girls going to school for the first time so they can realize their potential,” he said. “We appreciate a free press. We are enthralled when we see an entrepreneurial class grow up where people are able to work and realize their dreams.”

Bush used a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the U.S. Embassy to assure Afghans that he did not intend to abandon their country. “My message to the people of Afghanistan is, take a look at this building,” he said. “It’s a big, solid, permanent structure, which should represent the commitment of the United States of America to your liberty.”

Officers with machine guns surrounded Air Force One when it landed shortly after noon at Bagram air base. Trailing the president’s plane, door gunners aboard a helicopter carrying a small group of reporters fired machine-gun blasts as the craft sped along close to the ground. Reporters were told later that it was routine test fire.

The president had not visited Afghanistan before, but First Lady Laura Bush toured the nation last year and Vice President Dick Cheney was there this year.

Shortly before Bush arrived in New Delhi late Wednesday, thousands of demonstrators gathered in a park in peaceful protest of the U.S. president and his policies in Iraq.