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2 India's 'nuclear
liberation' By Sudha
Ramachandran
BANGALORE - With the US
Congress approving legislation that allows
civilian nuclear trade with India, a new era in
India's nuclear relationship with the world has
begun. While there is much jubilation in India
over the US legislation - it paves the way to
ending India's three-decade-long nuclear isolation
and will enable it to purchase nuclear fuel and
technology - sections in India's scientific and
strategic community remain concerned.
However, it will be at least another six
months before India can
begin
purchasing nuclear fuel and technologies. Several
further steps remain. India and the United States
will now have to finalize the bilateral 123
Agreement. New Delhi will have to sign
India-specific safeguards with the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). And the 45-country
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has to give its nod
to lifting the ban on international nuclear
commerce with India.
The 123 Agreement is
so called because Section 123 of the US Atomic
Energy Act of 1954 establishes an agreement for
cooperation as a prerequisite for nuclear deals
between the US and any other nation.
Diplomats and lobbyists are patting
themselves on their backs for having accomplished
what seemed nearly impossible even a few weeks ago
- getting the necessary enabling legislation
passed through Congress. New Delhi is relieved
that several of the concerns it had raised with
regard to provisions in bills passed by the House
of Representatives and the Senate have been
addressed in the conference committee, which
ironed out differences in the bills passed by the
two houses.
Much of the language that was
jarring has been deleted or diluted. For instance,
the provision in the House of Representatives'
bill that made it binding on the US to stop fuel
supplies to India by other countries should it
stop its own supplies has been done away with.
And the Senate's insistence on "annual
certification" by the US administration that India
is complying with all the conditions has been
watered down to an annual "assessment" that the US
government does in the case of several other laws.
The controversial demand that India dovetails its
Iran policy to US concerns over its nuclear
program has been made a non-binding clause in the
legislation.
C Raja Mohan,
strategic-affairs editor with the Indian Express,
has described the US legislation removing
restrictions of nuclear trade as India's "nuclear
liberation". It "has not only freed India from
three and a half decades of nuclear bondage, but
also met two of India's very important strategic
objectives - breaking the nuclear parity with
Pakistan and establishing strategic equivalence
with China".
Mohan points out that the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime had
denied India cooperation both on nuclear weapons
and on civil nuclear energy. Now the
administration of US President George W Bush has
come around to accepting that India should have
both. Besides, "in declaring that this exemption
from global nuclear rules is only for India and
that a similar favor will not be extended to
Pakistan, Congress broke the long-standing sense
of nuclear parity between New Delhi and Islamabad.
In accepting that New Delhi is a nuclear-weapon
power, and making special rules for civilian
nuclear cooperation with it, the US has also
established a practical nuclear equivalence
between India and China."
But several
scientists and analysts do not buy into this
argument. They are not impressed with the
legislation. They argue that language has been
tweaked and clauses shifted around from one
section to another and that by and large India's
concerns remain.
According to P K Iyengar,
former chairman of India's Atomic Energy
Commission, the legislation aims at indirectly
making India party to the NPT, the Fissile
Material Cut-off Treaty and the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty (CTBT) without India signing them. He
pointed out that the cooperation would be
terminated if India conducted a nuclear test. "It
is impossible to have a minimum credible deterrent
without conducting nuclear tests," he said. There
is concern too over end-use monitoring by the US.
Proponents of the nuclear deal in India
are hailing it for ending the "nuclear apartheid
of the past 30 years". They are pointing out that
the legislation, while not saying so explicitly,
deals with India as a nuclear-weapons power.
This is not so, says Bharat Karnad,
research fellow in the Center for Policy Research
in Delhi and author of Nuclear Weapons and
Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of
Strategy. "India continues to be treated as a
non-nuclear state," Karnad told Asia Times Online.
It is being denied full civilian nuclear
cooperation. Access to cutting-edge technologies
relating to enrichment, reprocessing of spent
fuel, and heavy-water production has been refused.
"Besides, the requirement that India accept
safeguards in perpetuity on its civilian nuclear
reactors is something that is applicable to
non-nuclear-weapon states," Karnad argued.
The US legislation removing restrictions
on nuclear cooperation with India is important
because this is a requirement for the NSG
