Indo-US Nuclear deal a top priority, says White House

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US President George W. Bush said that he has had a meeting with senior Senate Democratic leaders in a bid to get his agenda through not only in the current Lame Duck session but also some of the remaining priority issues for the Congress.

US assistant secretary of State Richard Boucher has also affirmed that the "dynamics" of the Indo-US nuclear deal would not change despite the drubbing by Democracts of the Republicans at the recent legislative elections, asserting that the Bush Administration had the deal on top of its priorities. "The dynamics (of the deal) will not change....we want to do it as fast as possible. The US has made it clear that we want to implement it," Boucher said.

"...the top of the list, if you start taking a look at the lame-duck session, we've already laid out a series of things on which both sides can work right now: the India civil nuclear deal, a free-trade agreement with Vietnam," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters when asked to list the top issues for the Lame Duck session likely to take place on November 15-16.

After his meeting with Bush, the present Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is tipped to become the Senate Majority Leader, said the first order of business when the session gets under way next year is Congressional oversight.

Reid also stressed that the President and the small group of senators had discussed several issues and hoped that the spirit of bi-partisanship will also be reflected at the Lame Duck session.

"...the first order of business when we reorganize after the first of the year is congressional oversight. Let's find out what's going on with the war in Iraq, the different large federal agencies that we have. There simply has been no oversight in recent years," Reid said.

"And I don't want to frighten anyone about investigations. Congressional oversight is not a negative term. People talk about investigations. There will be times, on rare occasions, when subpoenas will have to be offered, but rarely. If Congress does its job, and does congressional oversight as it's been done more than 200 years, it's good for everyone," Reid said.

"The President talked about my theme, which is bipartisanship. And I said to him, we have been six years, and we have two years to go to see if this will work. I hope we will. We have two ways of showing this. The first is in the Lame Duck and then, of course, after we come back the first of the year," he said. "There are so many important issues we can work on together. We talked about immigration...education...Iraq... energy. There are a lot of things that we need to work on, and we hope the President is sincere."

"Nothing can be accomplished in this town unless it's on a bipartisan basis. That's the way it goes," he added.

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