India nukes, US politics

[alvarezadams]

The corps strike again, via their weapons of choice (government):

Friends in high places help India

WASHINGTON: For India, which wants the U.S. Congress to approve an accord allowing it to acquire nuclear technology, it helps to have friends in high places.

Top executives at JPMorgan Chase, General Electric and Boeing are among those lobbying lawmakers to approve the agreement - a demonstration of the rapid emergence of pro-India groups as a political force in Washington.

The effort has already yielded results. Last month, after hearing pleas from the companies, U.S. business groups and Indian-American business executives, House and Senate committees overwhelmingly approved the outlines of the agreement, which would give India access to power-plant technology from companies including GE.

The lobbying was "a very impressive organizational effort," said Representative Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican who voted against the measure because of concern it may erode limits on nuclear- weapons technology. "The United States Congress wants to be more pro- India," said Leach, chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees U.S.-India relations.

India's influence stems from its economy's importance to U.S. businesses, as well as the Bush administration's view that the country's democratic government, rule of law and civilian control of the military set examples for other Asian and Middle Eastern nations.

India, the world's 11th-largest economy and most populous democracy, may one day be second only to Israel among international interests able to influence Washington policy makers, said Robert Hoffman, a lobbyist for Oracle, which has a majority interest in an Indian software maker.

The nuclear agreement, he said, "has been a coming-out party of sorts for the India lobby."

Proponents say the outline of the nuclear agreement - which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business organization, says may generate $100 billion in energy sales for U.S. companies including GE and Bechtel Group, the biggest U.S. engineering contractor - is likely to be approved by Congress this year. A further vote would be needed on the pact's details.

The U.S.-India relationship "has enormous long-term potential because it is anchored in so many different elements of the American power structure: business, strategic thinkers and politics," said Stephen Biegun, vice president for international government affairs for Ford Motor.

Ford, the world's third-largest automaker, makes about 50,000 cars a year in the eastern Indian city of Chennai. Biegun was an adviser to Condoleezza Rice, now the secretary of state, when she was President George W. Bush's national security adviser.

Among executives writing to lawmakers was William Harrison, chairman of JPMorgan, the third-biggest U.S. bank, said Ron Somers, head of the Chamber's U.S-India Business Council. JPMorgan, which is based in New York, has more than 7,000 employees in India, a spokesman for the company, Joe Evangelisti, said.

Others writing letters on India's behalf include James McNerney, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Boeing - the world's second-largest maker of commercial jets - and James Reinsch, president of Bechtel's nuclear-power division, officials of the two companies said.

The lobbying includes executives of GE, the world's second-biggest company by market value; American International Group, the world's largest insurer; Ford; Dow Chemical and Lockheed Martin, Somers said. Company representatives have met weekly since late last year to devise lobbying strategies, he said.

The pro-India lobby is far smaller than Israel's. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee had a $66.2 million budget in 2004, the most recent year for which records are available; India spends $1.3 million a year on its two Washington lobbying firms.

The Chamber of Commerce and its India lobbyist, Patton Boggs, Washington's biggest lobbying firm, haven't yet reported how much they are spending because such reports lag legislative events by as much as six months.

The next test for the India lobby's power will come as early as this month, when the full House and Senate take up the nuclear agreement, which seeks to exempt India from a U.S. ban on nuclear exports to countries that haven't signed the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India reached the accord in March.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that "there appears to be a very coordinated effort to have every Indian-American person that I know contact me" before the vote. Obama, a Democrat, said that "prominent investment bankers" called as well.

The Indian government hired the biggest Republican lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which employs the former U.S. ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. India also hired Birch Bayh, a former U.S. senator from Indiana, to lobby on its behalf, according to records filed with the U.S. Justice Department.

The Chamber of Commerce, which is based in Washington, said the effort has also been helped by support from international arms-control experts, including Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state.

Political committees made up of Indian-American executives are boosting their political donations. Sanjay Puri, president of the U.S. India Political Action Committee, estimates that his group has held 17 fund-raisers this year for lawmakers including Democratic Representatives Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Jim McDermott of Washington, co-founders of the 185-member House India Caucus.

The caucus and its 40-member Senate counterpart include about two- fifths of Congress. Puri is president and chief executive officer of Optimos, an information technology company in Chantilly, Virginia.

India's $775 billion economy expanded 9.3 percent in the first three months of 2006 from the year-earlier period. That growth helped raise GE's forecast for 2010 sales in India to $8 billion from $5 billion. GE Nuclear, a unit in Wilmington, North Carolina, says India may spend $27 billion on nuclear plants through 2020. In February, Boeing increased its forecast for aircraft sales in India through 2023 by 20 percent, to 592 planes.

Biegun, of Ford, said the nuclear agreement is the "linchpin to cementing the U.S.-India relationship," helping sales of his own and other U.S. companies. Tom Jurkowsky, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, the biggest U.S. defense contractor, said that India might become a customer for his company's F- 16 fighter planes and P-3 maritime patrol aircraft.

While nuclear agreement is the India lobby's main focus right now, Somers, the head of the Chamber of Commerce's India business group, said it can also be mobilized on other matters, such as the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and restrictions on the number of visas available to highly skilled workers who want to come to the United States.

"You better believe we're going to be up on the Hill in the future for other issues," Somers said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/17/bloomberg/sxrupee.php