India, the US and nuclear
proliferation By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Deeply perturbed over the
development, India has asked the United States to
withdraw sanctions it has imposed against two Indian
nuclear scientists accused by Washington of transferring
technology for weapons of mass destruction and missile
secrets to Iran.
New Delhi is particularly worried
about the timing. This has happened soon after President
George W Bush's Democratic challenger Senator John
F Kerry and then he himself named nuclear proliferation
as "the single most serious threat to the
national security of the United States". The fear is
that this may turn out to be a precursor to a wider
sanctions regime on the unsubstantiated excuse of Indian
nuclear proliferation based on US intelligence reports -
some of which have proved to be laughably outlandish in
Iraq.
It is possible, high-level
Indian officials feel, that this is merely a case of
some officials in the US administration trying to
score points by showing their alacrity in fighting
nuclear proliferation at this late stage in their
four-year term, even though this has clearly not been
their priority in recent years, as is illustrated by the
long rope given to Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear
program and the apparent mastermind of a global
nuclear smuggling network. Khan has not even been interviewed
by any non-Pakistani investigator, much less
been interrogated by officials of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as should have happened
immediately after his activities came to light.
To rub salt into Indian wounds, as it were,
US companies have turned out in force - Lockheed
Martin, Raytheon, United Defense and several smaller
companies - to exhibit their wares at the same venue in
Pakistan where for years Khan's company,
Khan Research Laboratories, used to hand out glossy
brochures advertising specialized equipment for making a
nuclear bomb - IDEAS 2004 in Karachi. In what appeared
to one observer, analyst Joshua Kucera, to be an oblique
reference to the most notorious past IDEAS exhibitor -
Khan - Pakistan's missiles, including the
nuclear-capable Shaheen II, are displayed outside,
behind a sign reading "Technological Demonstration - not
for sale". Interestingly, in a display of Orwellian
black humor, the slogan for this year's version of
Pakistan's biggest arms show is "Arms for Peace".
The US imposed weapons sanctions against Pakistan
in the 1990s after it found out about that
country's secret nuclear-bomb program. But then came September
11, 2001, and the war in Afghanistan, where Pakistani
support was required to fight their proteges, the
Taliban. Pakistan once again became America's new best
friend, a frontline sate in the "war on terror", and the
sanctions were lifted.
Although Pakistan is
still a state spawning Islamic fundamentalists and
obscurantists from its madrassas (religious
seminaries), Washington has opened up its pocketbooks
again. Over the next five years, Pakistan will get at
least US$1.5 billion in defense aid from the US as part
of a $3 billion aid package. An announcement made at
IDEAS 2004 suggests where some of that money is going to
be spent: Pakistani officials revealed that the US is
ready to reverse its longtime opposition to selling new
F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. The chief of the
Pakistani air force told a journalist that Washington
wants to provide the F-16s, in part, to help Pakistan
fight Islamist extremists in the tribal areas in the
northwestern part of the country, though anyone in
strategic business should know that if ever these
aircraft were used in combat they would be used against
India.
To clarify matters on its part, Indian
Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters
that the two Indian scientists had sold neither
materials, equipment nor technology. "No transfer of
sensitive technology has taken place," he said. "Our
track record in this is well known. The US government
has been asked to review the issue and withdraw the
sanctions."
Last week, US State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a press
briefing in Washington that two Indian scientists were
among "14 entities" against which the US has imposed
sanctions. He did not specify which entities were
individuals or firms. But he said there were seven from
China, two from India and one each in Belarus, North
Korea, Russia, Spain and Ukraine. "The penalties apply
to the entities themselves and not to countries or
governments," Boucher said. The penalties prohibit those
named under the sanctions from visiting the US or doing
business with any US-based companies.
Explaining
the innocence of the Indian scientists, Sarna said one
of them has never been to Iran and the other one had not
visited the country since mid-2003. "It has been
conveyed that we don't share the US views," he added.
India is worried over the impact
this controversy may have on the efforts India is
making for the transfer of sensitive technology from the
United States. India and the US have deepened
technology cooperation over the past few months. Last
month, Washington announced it had agreed to lift
export controls on equipment for nuclear facilities in
India after New Delhi assured the US it would address that
country's non-proliferation concerns. The deal was the first phase
under the "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership With
India" (NSSP) agreed in January between Bush and former
Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The
State Department did not detail the specific offenses by
the two scientists, but officials said it involved
alleged assistance to Iran's nuclear program during the
first half of 2003. Analyst Henry Sokolski, executive
director of the Washington-based Non-Proliferation
Policy Education Center, was quoted by news agencies as
having speculated that the sanctions may relate to
India's breakthrough development of an economic way to
produce tritium, a radioactive isotope used in nuclear
bombs. The US and other Western countries accuse Iran of
using a civilian nuclear energy program as a cover to
develop atomic weapons, a charge Tehran vehemently
denies.
It is a measure of the close
defense ties developing between the two countries that US
forces are seeking to benefit from the vast experience
the Indian military has had in fighting wars in
high-altitude mountains, glaciers and deserts, and even in
urban warfare, in quelling local disturbances as India
has been fighting insurgencies in its northeast for more
than half a century.
Only this week, beginning
Monday, the Indian navy for the first time displayed its
capability with the long-range maritime and submarine
hunter aircraft P3C Orions in what are euphemistically
called joint exercises with the US Navy off the Goa
coast. In the sixth of the Indo-US series of "Malabar
Exercises", the frontline Indian anti-submarine warfare
ships matched their skills with the US Pacific Fleet's
Los Angeles class nuclear submarine as well as a
Ticonderoga missile cruiser and an Oliver Hazard Perry
class guided-missile frigate. New Delhi and Washington
are negotiating for the Indian navy acquiring 10 P3C
Orions on a government-to-government sale to augment its
depleted maritime capabilities.
On its part, the
Indian navy is in the process of attaining higher skills
in intercepting unknown vessels, carrying out search and
seizure on the high seas to tackle terrorism-related
activities as well as protecting the country from
external aggression. Intercepting vessels on the high
seas, called Visual Boarding Search and Seize (VBSS), is
being carried out extensively by the US Navy, and India
is right now engaged in learning more about the
technicalities of the operation, said C S Patham,
commanding officer of INS Mysore. The ship is docked at
Mormugao Port in Goa to take part in the India-US joint
naval exercises - Malabar 2004.
Only last month,
the US administration lifted decades-old US export
restrictions on equipment for New Delhi's commercial
space program and nuclear power facilities. "It's an odd
time to be lifting those restrictions" when the
administration is concerned enough about India's
cooperation with Iran to impose new sanctions, said
Sokolski. The new sanctions are consistent with Under
Secretary of State John Bolton's determination,
officials claimed, to enforce non-proliferation laws,
even if it upsets countries where the US is pursuing
better ties. Bolton oversees non-proliferation policy.
US officials also claimed that the
Indian scientists' so-called proliferation activities
were discussed with the government in New Delhi in
advance and sanctions imposed only after New Delhi failed
to take action. The administration waived sanctions
on Indian companies "four or five times in the last
couple of years", but if the government did not take concrete
action to redress the situation sanctions could not be
waived, one official said.
Another official
stressed that the two scientists, not the Indian
government, were sanctioned, and New Delhi "needs to do
some punishing of people like this itself and prevent
these things from happening". Sokolski sees India
competing for influence in Iran against nuclear rival
Pakistan, whose top scientist Khan ran a black market
that sold atomic technology to Iran, Libya and North
Korea before being stopped by Islamabad at US prodding.
Pakistani intelligence had earlier accused India
of helping Iran when the latter admitted last year that
it had received foreign help, and media reports had
named Pakistan as one of countries whose nuclear
technology Iran was believed to be using. Editors of the
Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times of Lahore, who have
for long been passionately advocating normalization of
ties with India, had surprisingly concluded, even from
their own analysis, that India was involved (see Iran nukes and the
South Asian puzzle , August
30, 2003).
India had not bothered then to
respond vigorously to the Pakistani allegations,
probably believing that the charge was too outlandish to
be given credence. The Indian record on nuclear
non-proliferation has been excellent. It has had very
close relations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Muammar
Gaddafi's Libya, both leaders perpetually on the lookout
for nuclear technology in the 1970s and 1980s and in a
position to pay very well in cash and kind (oil), but
despite its weak economy, always in need of foreign
exchange, particularly to import oil, India never gave a
thought to the many blandishments offered.
One
of the reasons the US and other nuclear powers are wary
of India on the nuclear front, however, is that it was
not party to any aspect of the international
non-proliferation regime until 1997, when it signed the
Chemical Weapons Convention. Among the significant
treaties it has not signed are the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. Thus India has a very limited safeguards
agreement with the IAEA, which does not cover any of its
nuclear research facilities. That is why after its tests
in 1998 the US was hard put to find any multilateral
mechanism through which to sanction India.
India's biggest regret, in the present
controversy, however, is the awkward timing of the
accusation, which virtually seeks to put Indian
scientists at par with Pakistan's rogue scientists.
India is going all out to ensure that the NSSP
initiative is invested with some real substance and at
least the US Department of Commerce has claimed that
things are going very well in bilateral relations. When
an Indian journalist wrote an editorial last week
claiming that the NSSP was devoid of any real substance,
Matthew S Borman, deputy assistant secretary for export
administration, US Department of Commerce, wrote a
lengthy rejoinder to counter the claim.
On
its part, India is determined to persuade the US that
its project of spreading democracy requires that it
develop special ties with democratic countries and
shuns dictatorships such as Pakistan, even if it needs to use
them for a while in some project. The US, in according
"major non-NATO ally" status to Pakistan recently, has
drawn criticism in India.
The recent and the
first meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and Bush had also appeared to have gone well. The
new United Progressive Alliance government is in any
case keen to demonstrate that it has been able to
maintain the forward momentum created by the previous
government in developing close strategic ties with the
US, despite the sanctions imposed after the 1998 Pokhran
II nuclear tests.
Indian worries were best
expressed in an editorial in the Indian Express (October
4):
As happened in the Iraq case, it is
possible that interested parties have got together to
slap the charge on retired individuals trying to make
it generically somewhat similar to the proliferation
undertaken by Dr A Q Khan. These sanctions have the
potential of slowing down, if not actually derailing,
the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership between the
two countries. It is not enough for the Indian
government to ask the US to review its assessment
since no such transfer has taken place. The issue goes
well beyond sanctions on two retired individuals who
are unlikely to be affected beyond their prospects for
travel to the US. This case is far more likely to be
used by the non-proliferation hardliners in the US as
an example of poor Indian commitment to
non-proliferation, strategic literature is going to be
recycling half-truths to paint India as a new source
of proliferation. What is needed is greater
transparency on the issues involved. If, however,
there is any substance at all in US claim, then we owe
it ourselves to find ways to ensuring such cases do
not recur.
New Delhi is hoping that the
present controversy will soon blow away and the
countries will be able to get down to business as usual
in the shortest possible time. But there is also
apprehension that the inexplicable and totally unfounded
accusation may be a precursor to reimposition or
further tightening of the sanctions regime promulgated
after the nuclear tests of 1998. These sanctions had
been removed primarily because they had to be removed in
the case of Pakistan, which became a close US ally after
September 11 and the US could not be seen to be treating
the two newly-proclaimed nuclear weapon states
differently. In any case, the US has persisted with
treating India and Pakistan at par with each other, a
hyphen that India has long resented, but to no avail.
Sultan Shahin is a New Delhi-based
writer.
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