Washington: One of the fiercest opponents to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, Ed Markey has won the Massachusetts Senate seat, which was left vacant after Senator John Kerry was nominated as the Secretary of State.
66-year-old Makrey, a veteran Democrat Congressman beat Republican businessman Gabriel E Gomez after US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and the Vice President Joe Biden campaigned for him in Massachusetts.
An arch defender of nuclear non-proliferation regime, Markey had not only led a group of US lawmakers, but also strongly campaigned against the India-US civilian nuclear deal, which was eventually passed by the US Congress.
"Over the last couple of years I`ve been leading the opposition to the US-India nuclear deal because of the disastrous implications for the nuclear non-proliferation regime which has been protecting the world for a couple of generations," he told a news conference on October 18, 2007.
"And in some India papers they describe me as the arch critic of the US-India deal. But I really don`t see myself that way. I see myself as the arch defender of the nuclear non-proliferation regime," he said.
The special elections for Senate seat in Massachusetts were necessitated after the resignation of John Kerry, who was nominated by Obama, as his Secretary of State at the top of his second term.
Markey had then accused the then Bush Administration as blowing an enormous hole in the nuclear nonproliferation regime by granting unprecedented concessions to India, a country that has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
PTI
