Failure of nuclear pact would affect US outlook on India: Kissinger

NEW DELHI: India’s failure to implement the civil nuclear deal with the US can lead to questions over its ‘trustworthiness’ and may impact upon New Delhi’s quest for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has said.

“It (failure of the deal) would certainly, in an intangible way, affect calculations because when an American leader goes down a certain road, he stakes his prestige on the ability to get it executed. So in that sense, it would undoubtedly be a setback,” he told a news channel. “

Definitely, people would make that argument,” Mr Kissinger said, when asked whether questions could be raised in the US regarding India’s reliability if the nuclear deal fails to get through. He said there would “undoubtedly be disappointment and also there would be a question as to what extent one can calculate Indian reaction to the negotiations on other subjects,” he said.

Insisting that India should ratify the deal for “its own reasons”, he admitted that the failure of the deal “would certainly be a disappointment” for the Bush administration which “has put a lot of effort behind it”. Mr Kissinger said other countries, from whom India has been seeking support for the deal, could also wonder “what is going on and what that reflects. Does it reflect an immediate Indian internal problem or does it reflect the fundamental choice which makes it difficult to co-operate with India on these issues”.

Asked whether the failure of the deal could have an impact on India’s ambition for a permanent seat at UN Security Council, Mr Kissinger said: “I would anyway be in favour of India joining as a permanent member of UNSC because of the magnitude of the country. But it would certainly be one argument opponents might use to what is in any event, a complicated issue because of issues of veto and expansion.”