Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

Seven Republican Party candidates for the 2012 presidential election engaged in a tepid debate in New Hampshire on Monday night, with all of them in broad agreement on conservative values on relating to gay marriage, abortion rights, shrinking the size of government and repealing President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform.

Frontrunners such as Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, and nationally recognised figures Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were understandably reluctant to launch any attacks against their rivals this early in the contest, with more than six months to go before the primaries and caucuses kick off.

However what was remarkable was that even the candidates who were relatively less well-known or new to the national platform, including Tea Party-backed Michele Bachmann and former Pizza company CEO Herman Cain, focused their criticism on the shortcomings of Mr. Obama rather than seeking distinguish their policy stance from those of the others on stage.

The closest that any of them came to trading barbs was when Mr. Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, was questioned on his use of the term “Obamneycare,” an insinuation that the universal healthcare plan that Mr. Romney introduced in Massachusetts in 2006 was highly similar to the seminal Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama administration last year.

Yet even there Mr. Pawlenty passed up the opportunity to press Mr. Romney to spell out how his policy was any different to Mr. Obama’s healthcare reform. Instead he said that his decision to use “the term “Obamneycare” was a reflection of the President's comments that he designed Obamacare on the Massachusetts health care plan.”

The elephant in the room, however, was the absence of several Republican heavyweights who were yet to throw their hats in the ring, most notably former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Ambassador to China, John Huntsman. Both of them are widely expected to announce their candidacies in the near future.

To an extent the debate also reflected the conservative, economy-focused mood in the country, with the arguments predominantly revolving around domestic issues. Foreign policy found scarce mention throughout, with the candidates only offering a few critical words on the Obama administration’s costly military engagement in Libya and Afghanistan.

On Libya Ms. Bachmann said that U.S. involvement had failed to advance “any vital American interest,” and Mr. Paul, said that as Commander-in-Chief he would push for cuts to military spending in Afghanistan and consider bringing American troops home soon.

At certain points the debate was also indicative of what some view as a deeper malaise within the Republican ranks – that there is a growing disconnect between the fiscally and socially conservative Tea Party on the one hand and the mainstream Republican view on the other.

Exemplifying this tension, when Ms. Bachmann was asked about whether she would enact laws to define marriage as being between a man and woman only, she initially said that she was not in favour of interfering with state laws on this subject.

Yet contrary to the Tea Party principle that states ought to be free of federal government diktat, Ms. Bachmann later conceded that she would be in favour of enacting a common marriage law through constitutional decree.

The primaries and caucuses, which will throw up the final candidate to run against Mr. Obama in the 2012 elections, will be held early next year. However there will be at least two more debates before then, in August and September.

From The Hindu

The second round of the United States-India Strategic Dialogue is likely to be held in July, according to sources here, including statements by Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs. Additionally, the U.S. Treasury confirmed that the coming U.S.-India Economic and Financial Partnership will be held during June 27-28.

Speaking at a hearing on Capitol Hill this week, Mr. Blake spoke of the “arc” of U.S.-India relations, noting that the Obama-Singh meeting in Washington in November 2009 had opened a “new chapter” in the bilateral relationship.

Other senior officials confirmed that next month would be the likely window for the talks.

Mr. Blake too said that in July Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would travel to India to pursue with her Indian counterpart the “huge range of bilateral government-to-government activity,” specifically 21 separate sub-dialogues that include trade, defence, visas and innovation.

While trade and investments for innovation have broadly seen a strong upswing in recent years, there are outstanding issues relating to defence and visas that the two sides may seek to iron out.

Although, as Mr. Blake said, U.S. firms obtained almost $8 billion in defence sales in the past four years, including the purchase of 10 Boeing C-17 airlifters, six C-130J aircraft, and eight P-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft, the U.S. was ruled out during competitive bidding for the purchase of Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft by the Indian Air Force.

The decision, in April, to consider either the European Eurofighter or the French Rafale caught some policymakers here off-guard, raising questions about the extent to which India would continue to deepen its military ties with the U.S.

Thriving ties

Mr. Blake said U.S. visa issuance to Indians was a good indicator of “thriving relations,” and in the last four years, “Indians have received about half of all H1-B visas issued worldwide, and more than 44 per cent of all L-1 intra-company transfer visas.” He noted that 6,50,000 Indians travelled to the U.S. in 2010, an 18 per cent increase over 2009.

However, in this area too there are numerous wrinkles to smooth out, including allegations that some Indian IT companies were misusing H1 and B1 visas. Indian Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who is set to arrive in Washington later this month for a series of meetings, reportedly said he planned to take up the matter with the U.S.

Mr. Sharma was quoted as saying: “We have taken this up on more than one occasion with the U.S. government; I had written twice to the U.S. trade representative ambassador Ron Kirk, it should come up in the joint Trade Policy Forum.”

A dominant theme throughout this month's meetings in Washington and next month's talks in New Delhi is likely to be economic links and how they could be strengthened in the light of the ongoing recovery in the U.S.

In this context of particular salience will be the second annual meeting of the U.S.-India Economic and Financial Partnership, which will be hosted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and led by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on the Indian side.

From The Hindu

United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates launched a stinging critique of European countries' inadequate contributions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, even as he wound up a last tour abroad before his June 30 retirement.

Speaking to media in Brussels after the Shangri-La conference in Singapore, Mr. Gates said NATO faced a “dim, if not dismal” future and risked “collective military irrelevance”.

Warning that the U.S.' support for NATO operations may be reconsidered in light of the domestic economic situation, Mr. Gates said: “America's serious fiscal situation is now putting pressure on our defence budget, and we are in a process of assessing where the U.S. can or cannot accept more risk as a result of reducing the size of our military.”

Citing NATO engagement in both Afghanistan and Libya as examples of the U.S.' disproportionately large support relative to European members' contributions, Mr. Gates spoke of how the organisation had become a “two-tiered alliance between members who specialise in ‘soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and... those conducting the ‘hard' combat missions.” This dichotomy was “unacceptable”, he added.

Mr. Gates admitted that in Afghanistan the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force comprised approximately 40,000 non-U.S. troops of whom more than 850 “have made the ultimate sacrifice”.

Yet, he pointed out the Afghanistan experience had exposed serious alliance shortcomings in military capabilities and in political will and “Despite more than two million troops in uniform — not counting the U.S. military — NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops.”

In a sharply-worded criticism of European NATO-members' military capabilities in Libya, Mr. Gates said despite all the alliance member voting for the Libya mission, “less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission... Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't.”

Highlighting the U.S.' frustration with prolonged military engagements where it had to take the lead, Mr. Gates also said the “blunt reality” was there would be “dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress and in the American body politic writ large to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defence.”

From The Hindu

Arizona is burning, and this time it is not a metaphorical conflagration of anti-immigration laws or violent shootings by gun-toting extremists but a real fire that is consuming vast swathes of the beleaguered state's rural tracts.

The Wallow Fire, named after its starting point at the Bear Wallow Wilderness in eastern Arizona, is said to be burning so fast that it is already the third-largest fire on record and, aided by winds, is on track to becoming the largest ever.

With 389,000 acres charred and 11 buildings completely gutted by the fire already, local authorities ordered the evacuation of over 7,000 residents in two towns directly in the path of the advancing flames.

Although the fire has so far been contained primarily in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, where it was said to have been set off by an unattended campfire, the residents of Springerville and Eagar towns have already fled their homes, reports said.

Even as 2,500 fire-fighters battled the blaze from ground and sky officials warned that power transmission lines were in danger and states as far as Texas and New Mexico could suffer blackouts over the coming days.

Some New Mexico towns were also subject to evacuation orders. Observers said that air near Springerville was a “sickly yellow... thick with acrid smoke.”

Satellite imagery by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration captured the extent of damage visually, showing the 600 square miles of the Ponderosa Pine Forest that was burned since the fire started around May 29.

Reports quoted Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who visited the fire scene earlier, saying that it was a “frightening sight” as she viewed it from a plane.

One rancher in the area, Denny Finch, summed up the mood of helplessness in the state when he said to a media outlet, “[The authorities] are doing all that they can but this fire is in charge of its own destiny.”

From The Hindu

In a tribute to slain Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani called for a full investigation into the killing and said at a condolence meeting here that all of Pakistan had been “brutalised” by forces within.

Mr. Shahzad, an investigative journalist and the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online, was found dead in North-east Pakistan shortly after he wrote a feature story on the connections between al-Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence services in the context of what he called the “brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22”.

Reports said that Mr. Shahzad’s body bore the marks of torture when it was discovered in a canal two days after he disappeared.

Touching upon his own experience as a journalist in the past, which included an incident where he was “kidnapped, blindfolded, and a hood was put on my face”, Mr. Haqqani and several Pakistani journalists spoke of the continuing violence that all journalists in Pakistan were threatened with.

A representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that one of their recent studies had ranked Pakistan as the most “dangerous country in the world for reporters”, ahead of states such as Iraq, Mexico and Honduras. Bob Dietz of the CPJ described the manner in which Mr. Shahzad was killed as a “cold-blooded and brutal murder”.

An officer of another NGO, Reporters without Borders, said that 16 reporters had been killed in Pakistan in the last 15 months, and others added that four of these individuals had been killed in the last five months with around 37 journalists slain in the country since 1994.

Tom Malinowski, Washington Director for Human Rights Watch, confirmed that shortly before his death, Mr. Shahzad had sent an email to HRW, from which it was clear that Mr. Shahzad had received numerous threats, “not only from militants but also from people high up”.

Ambassador Haqqani, paying tribute to Mr. Shahzad’s bravery, said that the violence in Pakistan had engulfed not only journalists but also the broader system including political leaders such as Benazir Bhutto, Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti.

From The Hindu

Lundbeck, the Danish company embroiled in the controversy over the use of its products in lethal injections in the United States, has agreed to take action to restrict such use after facing intense pressure at home and abroad.

In a meeting this week with an anti-death-penalty campaign group, Reprieve, Lundbeck Chief Executive Officer Ulf Wiinberg reportedly said that the company had “reconsidered its position” and he acknowledged that “there are steps that the company could take to restrict the distribution of pentobarbital so that it is not delivered to execution chambers in the U.S., but still reaches legitimate users.”

Lundbeck is a U.S.-government-approved manufacturer of pentobarbital, a veterinary euthanasia barbiturate used to put down dogs. Pentobarbital has been used in 13 executions in the U.S. thus far, where it has replaced sodium thiopental, a more medically-tested and accepted barbiturate.

Over the course of the last one year, an increasing number of correctional facilities in the U.S. have turned to using pentobarbital – also known commercially as Nembutal – as the unconsciousness-inducing component of the lethal injection cocktail.

This trend accelerated following an announcement last summer by the main supplier of sodium thiopental in the U.S., a firm called Hospira, that it was ceasing production due to raw materials issues.

Reprieve officials said that while Lundbeck refused to make concrete assurances the company had agreed to hire “external consultants to assess the most effective strategies.”

The statement by Mr. Wiinberg came after months of intensive campaigns against Lundbeck, which also resulted in a major Danish pension fund, Unipension, selling 40 million Danish Kroner – nearly $8 million – worth of shares in the pharmaceutical company owing to concerns regarding pentobarbital use in U.S. executions.

After the meeting with Mr. Wiinberg, Reprieve said in a statement that the fierce criticism from press, politicians, non-governmental organisations and shareholders had led Lundbeck to promise that it would “be more transparent in their communications on this matter going forward... [and] that this time the full independent consultancy would be published.”

The campaign against Lundbeck’s involvement was further strengthened by the medical opinion of anaesthesia experts such as David Waisel of Harvard Medical School, who said, “The use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anaesthesia has no clinical history... [and] puts the inmate at risk for serious undue pain and suffering.”

Following the meeting with Lundbeck, Reprieve representative Maya Foa said, "At last we are beginning to see some positive movement from Lundbeck on this issue. But too much time has already been lost - not to mention too many lives.”

Ms. Foa said that in addition to the 13 people killed to date using Lundbeck’s drugs, another seven were set to be executed by the end of June, which is the timeframe in which Lundbeck promised to reconsider the issue.

From The Hindu

Ollanta Humala (48), a former Army officer and firebrand Leftwing candidate in Peru's presidential election, has snatched a razor-thin victory over Keiko Fujimori (36), daughter of the disgraced former President, Alberto Fujimori. With close to 85 per cent of the votes counted by Monday morning local time, Mr. Humala was said to have garnered 50.7 per cent of the votes while Ms. Fujimori had 49.29 per cent.

Ms. Fujimori, whose father is serving out a jail term over corruption and human rights abuses, refused to concede defeat outright, saying: “If the official results by the National Electoral Council confirm the difference of votes seen in the quick count then I will be the first one in recognising those results as I said from the beginning.”

A jubilant Mr. Humala said in a victory speech to supporters that “we will build a national consultation government”.

The two presidential campaigns had been blackened by mudslinging and “dirty tricks”, raising serious doubts on both candidates' ability to keep Peru on a stable path of growth with democracy.

At the heart of the electoral battle was the question of economic development, in particular the need to distribute wealth from the country's abundant mineral resources among the poorer sections of the population.

Mr. Humala, who lost a 2006 election runoff against outgoing President Alan Garcia after aligning himself closely with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, has subsequently toned down his rhetoric. His biggest campaign challenge this time around was in persuading voters that he would “share wealth more equally without frightening investors”. The results suggest he has succeeded. Mr. Humala was said to have won “overwhelming support from impoverished indigenous voters in Andean highlands who feel left out by Peru's mining-driven economic boom”.

Ms. Fujimori retained her popularity in the capital Lima, primarily among voters from the business community and the private sector. While many voters were said to view both her and Mr. Humala as “dangerous demagogues”, Ms. Fujimori's promise to drop a pledge to pardon her father appeared to boost her prospects.

However, now that victory is in his grasp, Mr. Humala will have to strike a balance with other Latin American heads of state. While he has repeatedly underscored the differences between his policy agenda and that of Mr. Chavez, he has also closely linked his image to that of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Yet Mr. Chavez and other left-of-centre leaders such as Bolivian President Evo Morales continue to play a key role in regional politics. They have already described Mr. Humala's victory as a “result of the people's struggle for dignity and sovereignty”.

From The Hindu

The New York Times broke with its 160-year history on Wednesday when it appointed, for the first time ever, a woman Executive Editor, Jill Abramson.

Ms. Abramson is currently the Managing Editor of the venerable voice of liberal America and in her new role will step into the shoes of her current boss, the renowned Bill Keller. Mr. Keller, the NYT announced, will “become a full-time writer for the paper” after he hands over the top job to Ms. Abramson in September.

Announcing the high level shuffle NYT Publisher and the Chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., thanked Mr. Keller for his service, saying to Ms. Abramson, “Jill, Bill’s decision to step down may be bittersweet. But the thought of you as our next Executive Editor gives me and gives all of us great comfort and great confidence.”

Mr. Keller steps down from his role after seeing the newspaper scoop up 18 Pulitzer prizes and boost its online audience size to nearly 50 million readers worldwide.

In the face of the economic downturn and the inexorable drift of readers and advertising to online editions, Mr. Keller was said to have proposed more “rigorous editing” and promised an ongoing commitment to “hard-hitting, ground-breaking journalism.”

While the NYT ended up laying off significant numbers of news staff in a bid to tighten its belt in recent years, Mr. Keller said on the occasion of Ms. Abramson’s appointment that “People talked, some of them rather smugly, about even The New York Times not being long for this world.” He added that now the NYT was now economically sturdy. “We are rich in talent. We are growing,” he said.

Ms. Abramson is a graduate of Harvard University and earlier in her career she was a senior reporter and then Deputy Bureau Chief at the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal. After becoming the Chief of Bureau of the NYT in Washington in 1997, she ascended to the Managing Editor role in 2003 following the Jayson Blair scandal.

Following that controversy, in which plagiarism and fabrication by a NYT journalist led to the resignation of Executive Editor Howell Raine, Mr. Keller became the new Executive Editor and appointed Ms. Abramson as his deputy.

From The Hindu

The United States labour markets continued to be buffeted by the economic downturn, with a mere 54,000 payroll employment jobs added in May, which left the overall unemployment rate essentially unchanged at 9.1 per cent.

The grim news came when U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics released its monthly jobs report, in which it said although private-sector employment continued to trend up with a net addition of 83,000 jobs, even that figure was a much smaller amount than the average for the prior three months, which was 244,000.

Reacting to the negative news, even as President Barack Obama continued to keep job creation at the top of his 2011 policy agenda, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee, said, “There are always bumps on the road to recovery, but the overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years.”

While he sought to focus attention on private-sector job growth arguing that this sector added more than 2.1 million jobs over the past 15 months, Mr. Goolsbee conceded that the unemployment rate was “unacceptably high and faster growth is needed to replace the jobs lost in the downturn.”

The slowdown in the jobs growth rate comes at a particularly challenging time for the Obama White House, as the recent clashes with the U.S. Congress over raising nation’s the debt limit are likely to put the brakes on any further initiatives to boost employment. In this context Mr. Goolsbee noted, “We will continue to work with Congress to responsibly reduce the deficit and live within our means.”

Thus while numerous measures such as the payroll tax cuts and business incentives for investment have already been implemented and may well have contributed to employment growth thus far, even Mr. Goolsbee admitted that the latest BLS report “is a reminder of the challenges that remain.”

Most worrying for the current administration must be what the BLS report indicates about stalled recovery in the manufacturing, real estate and construction sectors. The report said that employment in some manufacturing areas actually dipped in May, with 5,000 jobs being lost.

Construction employment was essentially unchanged in May, the report said, noting that employment in the industry has “shown little movement on net since early 2010, after having fallen sharply during the 2007-09 period.”

Further the report suggested that states and local governments were continuing to reel under deficit pressures. Employment in local government declined during May, by 28,000 jobs. In fact since an employment peak in September 2008 local governments in the U.S. have lost 446,000 jobs, the report cautioned.

Yet Mr. Goolsbee struck a note of hope on the employment-boosting policies of the administration. He said, “We are focused on promoting exports, reducing regulatory burdens and making the investments in education, research and development, and infrastructure that will grow our economy and create jobs.”

Taking forward the United States' conciliatory approach towards China, possibly in anticipation of a major fighter aircraft sale to Taiwan later this year, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that his country was “not trying to hold China down.”

Speaking to media on the eve of the Shangri-La talks between the U.S. and East Asian nations, Mr. Gates said China had been a “great power for thousands of years.” He added that China “is a global power and will be a global power.” The Secretary's comments came in the wake of recent moves between the U.S. and China, to bring greater rapprochement to a bilateral relationship that hit a frosty low last year. Following U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement of a major weapons sale to Taiwan in January 2010, Beijing severed all military ties with Washington.

Notwithstanding Mr. Gates' efforts, history could well be on the brink of repeating itself as last week 45 Senators from both sides of the U.S. Congress urged the White House to press forward with the sale of 66 new F-16 C/D fighters to Taiwan.

“Without new fighter aircraft and upgrades to its existing fleet of F-16s, Taiwan will be dangerously exposed to Chinese military threats, aggression and provocation, which pose significant national security implications for the United States,” said the Senators in their letter.

Mr. Gates echoed similar sentiments on the U.S.' interests in Taiwan, however treading a careful line with regards to the implications of this for China. He said while the U.S. did have obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, it had tried to “thread the needle pretty carefully in terms of Taiwan's defensive capabilities, but at the same time being aware of China's sensitivities.”

When the U.S. invited the People's Liberation Army Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde to Washington recently as part of the broader attempt to reset military-to-military relations, the Chinese General was reported to have “renewed his objection to any U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.” Yet even General Bingde sought to water down recent calls in the U.S. for more transparency in Chinese military capabilities, particularly in terms of their focus on Taiwan. Arguing that American claims of Chinese military capabilities are exaggerated, the General said “China's efforts to enhance... military capabilities is mainly targeted at separatist forces ... who have attempted to split Taiwan away from China.”

From The Hindu

Tensions relating to Afghanistan again erupted at the highest political levels this week when Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted angrily to civilian casualties in NATO strikes, warning the United States in particular that if they did not stop immediately his government would take “unilateral action” by way of response.

NATO officials admitted that their air strike last Friday against a residential compound in the restive Helmand province “inadvertently killed at least nine civilians.” Yet the actual number of civilians killed remained unclear due to varying official accounts, with some reports saying that 14 civilians, including up to 12 children and one woman, had been killed.

In a thinly veiled threat President Karzai said to media this week that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate these attacks on their homes, and “If you do not come to an understanding with us based on a negotiated solution... the Afghan government will be forced to take a unilateral action in this regard.”

Shortly after latest air strike a U.S. spokesman, Major General John Toolan, issued an official apology on behalf of top coalition commanders General David Petraeus and General David Rodriguez, adding that they would ensure that “we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture.”

Nevertheless Mr. Karzai also alluded to his country's historical response to wars of occupation, warning NATO that it needed to “clearly demonstrate” its understanding that Afghanistan was “an ally, not an occupied country.” If it did not do so, he said, “then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that.”

Following Mr. Karzai's remarks U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates sought to downplay the criticism and deflect attention to the increasing number of attacks by the Taliban against Western and Afghan forces.

In comments to media Mr. Gates said he did not know the specifics of the Helmand incident, but noted that “this is a continuing challenge we face in the war that we fight in Afghanistan,” and a joint Afghan-coalition investigation would “get to the bottom of the incident.”

He also emphasised that it was the Taliban that had no regard for civilian lives and was responsible for roughly 80 per cent of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. “They are not even seeking to shield themselves in civilian communities... but are actively using improvised explosive devices to kill men, women and children,” he said.

The Secretary was quick, however, to address Mr. Karzai's demand that Afghanistan not be treated as an occupied territory. He said Mr. Karzai “and the Afghan people recognize that we are their ally, we are their friend, and we are trying to develop the capability to protect themselves so that the Afghan people can see an end to the problem.”

The latest flare-up came even as there is barely one month left to U.S. President Barack Obama's planned troop drawdown. Back home Mr. Obama has come under pressure to hasten the withdrawal of troops as members of the U.S. Congress have grown increasingly concerned about the massive adverse fiscal impact of the war.

When initially announcing the plan for withdrawal last December, the U.S. and its allies set 2014 as a deadline for the transfer all security responsibility to Afghanistan. However Mr. Obama even then qualified the plan with the caveat that the U.S. would “continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul.”

From The Hindu

The embroilment in a death penalty row of an Indian supplier of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in the lethal injection cocktail in the United States, deepened recently when one death row inmate’s lawyers questioned the firm’s “competence and credibility” and leaked emails between officials of the firm revealed internal conflicts.

The exports of thiopental to the U.S. by Kayem Pharma, the Mumbai-based supplier of the unconsciousness-inducing barbiturate, came under fire for a second time after a motion filed by Nebraska prison detainee Carey Dean Moore asserted that he was about to be executed with thiopental from a manufacturer that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Food and Drug Administration had not approved.

Earlier this year media attention focused on Kayem when a United Kingdom-based anti-death penalty group, Reprieve, sought to highlight the fact that despite not being approved by U.S. regulators it had exported 500 one-gram vials of thiopental to the Nebraska Department of Corrections, enough to kill 166 men. Under intense pressure the firm then stated publicly that it would stop exporting thiopental to the U.S. immediately.

However given that the main supplier of thiopental in the U.S., a firm called Hospira, announced last year that it was ceasing production due to raw materials issues, a slew of correctional facilities in the U.S. has continued to seek out alternative suppliers of the drug or switch to pentobarbital, a veterinary euthanasia barbiturate used to put down dogs.

Like Kayem Pharma, Lundbeck Company of Denmark has found itself caught up in the legal and regulatory tussles over the use of untested drugs to kill prisoners. The firm, which has since 2010 supplied pentobarbital to U.S. correctional facilities, has faced challenges at home. A major Danish pension fund, Unipension, sold 40 million Danish Kroner (nearly U.S. $8 million) worth of shares in the pharmaceutical company, as a result of concerns regarding pentobarbital use in U.S. executions.

Neither this controversy nor the opinion of experts like David Waisel of Harvard Medical School, who says “the use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anaesthesia has no clinical history... [and] puts the inmate at risk for serious undue pain and suffering,” has stopped the states of Alabama and Arizona from executing two men using pentobarbital.

Commenting on Lundbeck’s role in his execution, Reprieve Investigator Maya Foa said: “Aside from moral concerns, this is damaging [Lundbeck’s] reputation as a business – one investor recently sold their shares and others are asking questions.” She added that Lundbeck should exit the execution drug market immediately if it wanted to salvage its reputation.