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 jets to Pakistan. Rice went to New Delhi to break the news -- and to cushion 
 the blow by offering India the prospect of a broader strategic relationship, 
 including military, economic and even nuclear cooperation. 
  
 Rice's presentation, while still vague about the specifics, sent shockwaves 
 through New Delhi. "As Rice put across an unprecedented framework for 
 cooperation with India, the establishment in Delhi was stunned," according 
 to "Impossible Allies," a book on the deal by Indian journalist C. Raja 
 Mohan, published last month in India. "Few had expected Rice to go this 
 far." 
  
 >From the Indian perspective, the partnership Rice suggested offered a way 
 to finally remove the nuclear impediment to closer ties with the United 
 States. "If you are going to be looking at India as a partner . . . then you 
 have to treat India as a partner and not as a target," Foreign Secretary 
 Shyam Saran said. "Both these things cannot be done together." 
  
 Because of international restrictions, India's nuclear program is largely 
 homegrown, cut off from international markets. This has hobbled India's use 
 of nuclear power -- it provides only about 3 percent of installed 
 electricity capacity -- and left it desperate for energy as its economy has 
 soared. 
  
 A key designer of the new approach was Philip Zelikow, Rice's counselor and 
 longtime colleague. Upon Rice's return from Asia, Zelikow began exchanging 
 memos with Tellis, resulting in a 50-page "action agenda" for U.S.-Indian 
 relations completed in mid-May. 
  
 The paper promoted geostrategic cooperation between the two countries rooted 
 strongly in U.S. defense and military sales to India as a way to counter 
 China's influence. "If the United States is serious about advancing its 
 geopolitical objectives in Asia, it would almost by definition help New 
 Delhi develop strategic capabilities such that India's nuclear weaponry and 
 associated delivery systems could deter against the growing and utterly more 
 capable nuclear forces Beijing is likely to possess by 2025," Tellis wrote. 
  
 Ten days after Rice's visit, when Bush announced the F-16 sale to Pakistan, 
 State Department officials held a background briefing on the new India 
 policy. One official -- identified by Mohan as Zelikow -- said the policy's 
 "goal is to help India become a major world power in the 21st century. We 
 understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that 
 statement." 
  
 One U.S. official involved in the briefing said Zelikow's statement went 
 beyond the talking points drafted for the news conference -- but as time 
 passed, it was clear his bolder pronouncement reflected the administration's 
 true position. 
  
 "We had been thinking about this question: How much should you go for? Would 
 an incremental approach be better, would it be more easily digestible [by 
 Congress]?" a senior official asked. "We decided to go for the big bang." 
  
 At this critical junction, one of the leading skeptics of a nuclear deal 
 with India -- John R. Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control 
 - -- was nominated U.N. ambassador. The long battle over his appointment 
 delayed confirmation of his replacement, Robert G. Joseph, until May 26. 
 Other key posts in the nonproliferation ranks were unfilled, leaving 
 officials in that area thinking they had no voice in the debate. The 
 Pentagon, meanwhile, fully backed closer relations with India. 
  
 By the time Joseph arrived at the State Department on June 1, the initiative 
 with India was largely underway. Rice dispatched Burns to begin negotiations 
 with India, working mainly with his counterpart, Foreign Secretary Saran. 
  
 Because neither Zelikow nor Burns was an expert in nuclear specifics, Joseph 
 and John D. Rood, his successor and counterpart at the National Security 
 Council, began outlining, with input from their staffs, commitments they 
 hoped to extract from India. 
  
 Leading the nonproliferation interests of the administration, Rood and 
 Joseph envisioned a deal in which India would, among other things, agree to 
 limit production of plutonium to a level that ensured the minimal deterrent 
 capability it sought. 
  
 The two nuclear experts also wanted India to place all of its 
 electricity-producing reactors under permanent safeguards to be monitored by 
 U.N. inspectors. Such an arrangement would ensure, in accordance with U.S. 
 law, that any American technology going to India would not be used for its 
 weapons program. 
  
 But by the time U.S. negotiators agreed on a number of requests -- just days 
 before Singh's arrival on July 18 -- many of the key items on the 
 Joseph-Rood list had been taken off the table, said senior officials who 
 were involved. "We never even got to the stage where we could negotiate 
 them," one official said. The Indians had already made clear to Burns in 
 discussions weeks earlier that they were not interested in outside influence 
 over their nuclear weapons program. "We knew well before Singh's arrival 
 that the Indians wouldn't accept most of that," another senior U.S. 
 negotiator said. 
  
 When the final negotiations began before Singh's visit, Joseph wasn't there. 
 Instead, he went overseas on other business, leaving Rood as the lone senior 
 nonproliferation voice on a negotiating team stacked with officials eager to 
 clinch a deal upon Singh's arrival. 
  
 Officials said Rood delivered forceful presentations to Burns and others 
 throughout the negotiating process, laying out key nonproliferation 
 concerns. Without a limit on fissile material production, the deal could 
 allow India to make many more weapons than it needed. There was also concern 
 about rewarding a country that built nuclear weapons in secret, which North 
 Korea and Iran are accused of doing. Some in the administration said the 
 deal would hurt U.S. efforts to pressure those countries on their programs. 
  
 Few Indian officials expected a breakthrough during the Bush-Singh meeting 
 in July, but Rice was determined to see the negotiations succeed. Bush had 
 reached the conclusion that the nuclear concerns carried less weight than 
 the enormous benefits that a broad partnership with a large and friendly 
 democracy could bring. The Final Push 
  
 Burns, Saran and other officials conferred for nearly three days. From the 
 start, negotiators said the conversations were tense as it became clear that 
 the U.S. goals were not what India was hoping to hear. One by one, Indian 
 negotiators balked at requests, indicating they would walk away before 
 accepting conditions for inspections and other safeguards. 
  
 Rice went to Saran's suite in the Willard Hotel on Sunday, July 17, to 
 provide a final push. At 6 p.m., she and Burns thought they had an 
 agreement, but then Saran called Burns at 10:30 p.m., saying the deal was 
 off -- it was too much politically for the Indian government to swallow all 
 at once. 
  
 On Monday, July 18, the morning that Singh was to meet with Bush, Rice 
 called Burns at 5:30 a.m. and said, "We're not going to give up." She met 
 with Singh at 8 a.m. and persuaded him to let the negotiators try again. 
  
 Thus, as Bush and Singh met one-on-one in the Oval Office, senior U.S. and 
 Indian aides closeted in the Roosevelt Room were furiously scribbling out 
 the text of a deal that would overturn three decades of U.S. policy on 
 stemming the spread of nuclear weapons. 
  
 There were several highly technical issues holding up the announcement. But, 
 in essence, India wanted the coveted status of an official nuclear state, a 
  
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  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)