US turns the screws on deal with
India By Ramtanu Maitra
The "historic" US-India nuclear deal of
July 18, on which Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh wants to situate his legacy, is in trouble.
It is evident that the US Congress is keen to
extract the proverbial pound of flesh before it
approves the deal. It also seems the optimism that
prevailed in the Indian camp earlier is vanishing
fast and what India will have to surrender to get
the deal through could well be the new worry of
New Delhi.
At the end of November, Indian
Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran was in Washington to
attend the inaugural session of the Indo-US High
Technology Cooperation Group's meeting. Addressing the
session, the Indian visitor
said: "The nuclear agreement, as would be
appreciated, has larger implications for
high-technology trade as it is premised on US
recognition of India's impeccable record on
non-proliferation. It not only recognizes that
non-proliferation is better served with India as a
partner, but also sends a clear signal that India
cannot be a partner and a target at the same time
of technology denial regime." It is evident that
the Indian foreign secretary's efforts to grease
the wheels did not accomplish much.
The
crunch On November 18, a group of US
nuclear non-proliferation experts [1] (some call
them the American "ayatollahs of
non-proliferation"), sent an open letter to the
House of Representatives urging the lawmakers "to
critically examine the July 18 proposal to allow
for 'full' US-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation,
which would require significant changes to US
non-proliferation laws and long-standing
international non-proliferation policy that have
been supported and advanced by past Republican and
Democratic administrations".
All the
individuals who have put their signatures to the
letter are like hallowed institutions in
Washington, shoring up for years the increasingly
tattered American non-proliferation policy.
In case the lawmakers missed the point,
this powerful group pointed out that President
George W Bush and administration officials
involved with the proposed agreement had withheld
the key details needed to help Congress fully
understand the implications of the proposal.
"Accordingly, we urge that before any
action is taken on any legislation sent up by the
administration to implement the proposal, Congress
should obtain detailed answers to a number of
questions," they said.
The sticking point
is that "so far, India has pledged only to accept
voluntary safeguards over 'civilian' nuclear
facilities of its choosing", they pointed out.
"This could allow India to withdraw any nuclear
facility from [International Atomic Energy Agency
- IAEA]) safeguards for national security reasons.
Such an arrangement would be purely symbolic and
would do nothing to prevent the continued
production of fissile material for weapons by
India."
They also said "the supply of
nuclear fuel to India would free up its existing
stockpile and capacity to produce highly enriched
uranium and plutonium for weapons. To help ensure
that US civilian nuclear cooperation is not in any
way advancing India's weapons program, it would be
essential to apply permanent, facility-specific
safeguards on a mutually agreed and broad list of
current and future Indian nuclear facilities
involved in civilian activities and electricity
production in combination with a cutoff of Indian
fissile material production for weapons."
The group then went on to recommend that
"specifically, civilian nuclear assistance should
not be extended to India until it implements a
cessation of the production of fissile material
for weapons, which has been adopted by the five
original nuclear-weapon states".
Another
fear expressed by the group is that the
arrangement proposed by the Bush administration
could also trigger a significant erosion of the
guidelines of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG), which are an important barrier
against the transfer of nuclear material,
equipment and technologies for weapons purposes.
Urging the lawmakers not to provide any
civilian assistance to India without the full
concurrence of the NSG and approval of India's
safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the group
said: "The proposed civil nuclear cooperation
arrangement may also undermine our ability to win
necessary international support for persuading
Iran to abandon its fuel cycle plans and to make
its nuclear program fully transparent to the
IAEA."
Snowballing effect It was
evident from the outset that Tehran's development
of a nuclear program, which New Delhi condemns as
well, and Washington's difficulties in dealing
with the situation in Tehran, would be linked by
the opponents of the Bush-Manmohan Singh deal in
their attempt to kill it.
But, perhaps,
the group went even a step further, saying the
deal could persuade states who "have for decades
remained true to the original NPT [nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty] bargain and forsworn
nuclear weapons" to "make a different choice in
the future if non-NPT members [such as India]
receive civil nuclear assistance under less
rigorous terms."
New Delhi, without giving
the group's open letter any publicity, saw the red
flag and sent Shyam Saran. It is evident that the
Indian foreign secretary did not achieve much.
On November 30, Congressman Edward Markey
and ranking member in the Energy and Commerce
Committee, sent a letter to Bush along with the
group's expressed concerns and a set of questions
for consideration on proposed nuclear cooperation
with India, "respectfully requesting" the White
House to "provide responses to all of the
questions that these experts have raised about
various aspects of the proposal".
A copy
of the letter, and the attachment, were also sent
to the US secretary of defense and the secretary
of state.
On December 7, the chairman of
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard
Lugar, addressing the Aspen Strategic Group, made
clear his concerns, pointing out India had to
first separate its civilian and military nuclear
programs and place all its nuclear reactors under
IAEA inspections.
Lugar said an "opaque or
incomprehensible" Indian separation plan would
only raise more questions, particularly in
Congress, about India's intentions. "More
generally, as a politician in the United States
Senate charged with guiding this agreement through
the legislative branch, I would urge the Indian
side to think in maximalist [sic] terms and
include as many facilities as possible within the
scope of the civilian declaration," he said.
"Conversely, a minimalist approach will
likely only delay consideration of this initiative
in the US Congress and in the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. Or, at worst, it could result in
unfavorable action by one or both bodies," Lugar
said.
Although pointing out that he was
issuing no threat, Lugar said, "While the Bush
administration has, I think, been very clear in
discussions with the Indian government about its
expectations, let me emphasize that any Indian
plan will have to pass muster with the United
States Congress."
Lugar's position would
require India to give up a major portion of its
military nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards,
which would effectively cap India's deterrence,
some observers claim. In other words, they say,
India would be left exposed and vulnerable,
self-defeating the country nuclear weapons'
program and its defense.
The Nunn-Lugar
Act It is not difficult to understand why
Lugar wanted the plan to be "credible, transparent
and defensible from a non-proliferation
standpoint". He, along with former Democratic
senator from Georgia, Sam Nunn, was instrumental
in getting Congress to pass the Cooperative Threat
Reduction (CTR) Act in 1991.
This was
after the Soviet Union disintegrated in late 1991;
Soviet nuclear weapons were in the hands of four
suddenly independent republics - Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Belarus - whose leadership appeared
confused and wobbly.
In response to that
threatening turn of events, Nunn and Lugar
persuaded Congress to pass the CTR program to
provide assistance for dismantling or safely
storing the weapons in the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
This came to be known as the Nunn-Lugar Act.
The act, which was funded by a
congressionally authorized transfer of $400
million from Department of Defense operations and
maintenance accounts to Nunn-Lugar projects in
fiscal year 1992, focused on weapon destruction
and security.
While the act has been
criticized widely, particularly the transfer of
aid part of it, there are many in Washington who
realize that it helped destroy large numbers of
nuclear warheads and diminished threat posed by
weapons of mass destruction.
In dealing
with the US-India nuclear deal, it would be naive
to expect that Lugar would not take an extremely
hard stand on the issue of India and weapons of
mass destruction.
For New Delhi, the
question is: where to go from here? It is evident
that Manmohan's recent three-day visit to Moscow
had a civilian nuclear element. It seems that
Russian President Vladimir Putin is perfectly
willing to sell more of his light water reactors
(LWRs)to India. Russia has sold India two 1,000 MW
reactors, but could not promise any more because
Russia, being a part of the NSG, cannot afford to
violate the laws laid down by the NSG.
The obstacles During Singh's
discussions in Moscow, it was evident that the
Russians would supply more enriched uranium-fueled
LWRs if the US-India nuclear cooperation deal went
through. That means, Moscow will not independently
deal with the NSG vis-a-vis India, and will rely
on Washington to get NSG approval.
In
other words, if the US Congress in the short term
does not approve the Bush-Manmohan deal, nothing
much will help India in its plan to import nuclear
reactors from abroad and solve some of its
long-term electricity requirements. In this
situation, strategic ties with Moscow will not
help New Delhi one bit.
And there is
nothing much India can do. However, there are some
developments of which New Delhi should take note.
A great deal of the problem vis-a-vis
getting the nuclear deal through Congress lies in
the weakening of the Bush administration. At
present, the White House is being pummeled from
all sides, starting with the Iraq war. This is
taking its toll on Republican lawmakers worried
about elections in 2006, and they have begun to
raise questions on issues they would not have
previously questioned.
The Bush-Manmohan
nuclear deal could be one issue where some
Republicans will express their increasing
independence from the White House. As for the
Democrats, it is likely that most of them will not
like to concede the White House even an inch.
It is also unlikely that the White House
will have the energy and verve to do what is
necessary to get the deal through. In addition,
something else has begun to bother the Indians.
Addressing the John Hopkins University on December
1, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
and an apparent promoter of the deal, Nicholas
Burns, alleged Indian commitments on Iran.
Burns said, "The Indians have assured us
there is no [energy] plan on the table that is
ready for decision by the Iranian and Indian
governments, that any plans, any discussions, have
been hypothetical and are years away."
While returning from Moscow with the
Indian premier, minister Saran told the media that
he did not remember anyone giving the Americans
any such assurance.
If Saran is telling
the truth, it means Washington has come to believe
that New Delhi is desperate for the ratification
of the July agreement and will be willing to
accommodate some American demands that could help
the Bush administration on the domestic scene.
Note [1] The signatories
include Hal Bengelsdorf, consultant, and former
director of the Office for Non-proliferation
Policy at the Energy Department and former office
director for nuclear affairs at the State
Department; Robert J Einhorn, senior adviser,
Center for Strategic and International Studies and
former assistant secretary of state for
non-proliferation; John Holum, former under
secretary of state for arms control and
international security affairs and former director
of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Victor
Gilinsky, energy consultant and former US nuclear
regulatory commissioner, among 12 others.
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