'Delaying N-deal can jeopardise approval in US Congress'

Delaying the Indo-US nuclear deal will "jeopardise" its getting through Congress and the notion that India will get something better in a new Democratic administration is "misplaced", a senior Indian-American community leader has said.

"For Indian leaders to believe that they can wait for the next US president to get a better deal -- and they are hoping that it will be Senator Hillary Clinton -- they need to look at the fact that there were 12 US senators who voted against the Hyde Bill and they were all Democrats with nine of them chairing the most influential committees in Congress," Ashok Mago, chairman of the Dallas Based US-India Forum, said.

Talking to PTI, Mago, who has been in the forefront of lobbying for the passage of the Hyde Act last year, said, "Our leaders in India do not understand the system in the US. They think the president sends a bill to Congress and it is approved and done. In this case, the bill which became the Hyde Act is actually not the one that President Bush sent."