Washington (Platts)--24Jul2008

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted Thursday
to approve a bill establishing conditions for US-Russian nuclear cooperation,
which also may increase the chances that the two countries' cooperation deal
will go into effect before the end of the year.

Before approving the bill (H.R. 6574), some members of the panel
emphasized that it was "first and foremost" a bill approving the cooperation
agreement, as one Democrat put it.

Nuclear pacts such as the one with Russia can enter into force without
congressional action if they lie before Congress for 90 days of continuous
session. But the Bush administration submitted the agreement to Congress May
13, meaning that if Congress adjourns as planned September 26, it will be
about two weeks short of the 90 days and the new president would have to
submit the agreement to a new Congress next year.

Enacting a bill such as the one the House panel approved would make
the 90-day clock irrelevant, but it would require the House and Senate to
agree on the text. During the Thursday markup, Representative Brad
Sherman, a California Democrat, suggested that the Senate was likely to seek
conditions less stringent than those in the panel's bill.

The bill would make the issuance of licenses for nuclear exports to
Russia contingent on a presidential certification that Russia was not
providing Iran with assistance relevant to nuclear or other types of weapons.
The president would have to make the certification for each fiscal year in
which nuclear export licenses were issued. Exports for Iran's Russian-supplied
Bushehr reactor would be explicitly excluded.

The president also would have to certify that Russia was "fully and
completely" supporting US efforts to impose "effective" international
sanctions on Iran in response to the country's nuclear program, which the US
and other countries have said is designed to give Iran a nuclear weapons
capability.

Russia also would have to ratify the Convention on Supplementary
Compensation for Nuclear Damage or enact "domestic law that provides adequate
liability protections" for US firms to engage in nuclear trade with Russia,
Another provision of the bill would revise the congressional procedures for
reviewing future nuclear cooperation agreements.

Advocates of the agreement say it would enable Russia and the US to
broaden their technical and commercial cooperation in important ways. It also
would help solidify Russian support for US nonproliferation efforts, the
advocates say.

--Daniel Horner, daniel_horner@platts.com