Page 2 of
2 Mushroom cloud over US-India
nuclear talks By Sudha
Ramachandran
progress was made, but
in our view, not enough," said Nicholas Burns, US
Under Secretary of State and the Bush
administration's main interlocutor with India on
the nuclear deal. "The US has done its part. We've
met every commitment we said we would meet."
US State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack told reporters: "Certainly, we have
acted in good faith in these negotiations to see
that they move forward, and we can only
assume that that is the
motivation of the Indian government as well."
Indian officials disagree. They maintain
that it is India that has acted in good faith so
far and point to the way Washington has shifted
the goalposts since the July 2005 agreement.
Indian analysts have drawn attention to US
efforts to pressure India to hurry up with the
deal.
Siddharth Varadarajan wrote in The
Hindu that in "the run-up to the [Henry] Hyde Act,
the Bush administration played the
executive-legislature division in Washington to
the hilt in order to shift the goal posts of the
July 2005 agreement. Today, US officials are
pressing India to conclude the 123 negotiations
quickly, citing domestic political uncertainties
caused by the ascendancy of the Democrats. As the
US slips into presidential election mode, it is
said Congress' appetite to give President Bush a
foreign-policy boost by approving the 123
agreement will diminish ...
"By seeking to
introduce an artificial deadline, the US hopes to
browbeat India into abandoning its concerns."
It is in this context that the allegations
regarding the flouting of US law for procurement
of sensitive technology by Indian government
entities should be seen, a former diplomat told
Asia Times Online. "It is possible that this is
aimed at putting India on the defensive, to make
it more willing to back down on contentious
issues," he said.
Indian officials point
out that the recent allegations are not related to
nuclear proliferation. India's record on that
remains unblemished. But "the allegations, if
true, are embarrassing nonetheless", an official
in the Ministry of External Affairs admitted, and
"couldn't have come at a worse time for India".
Indian officials point out that while the
allegations have put India in a bit of an
embarrassing spot now, in the long run the Bush
administration could also feel the heat as the
non-proliferation lobby in the US and critics of
the India-US nuclear deal can be expected to use
the controversy to derail the deal.
"If
the Indian government has attempted to circumvent
US export controls over sensitive missile
technology, as is alleged in the indictment, then
it has violated its explicit agreements to become
a responsible international actor in the context
of non-proliferation," Ed Markey, a member of the
House of Representatives and a vociferous critic
of the nuclear deal, has said.
After the
finalizing of the 123 Agreement, it will need to
be passed by the US Congress. There is concern
that the allegations against India will now put
the agreement under greater congressional
scrutiny.
Indian proponents of the deal
want India to be less intransigent about getting
things clearly stated in the 123 Agreement. They
are calling on India to quibble less about its
concerns.
An editorial in the Indian
Express said: "New Delhi wants its rights
unambiguously written into the 123 Agreement.
Washington is looking at finesse by kicking the
can down the road ... For the US, it makes little
sense to let the technical quibble over plutonium
undermine the huge strategic investment it has
made in transforming the relationship with India.
In its embrace of legalism, New Delhi is in danger
of forgetting the real objective of liberating
itself from the straitjacket of a global regime
that prevents any nuclear cooperation with India."
But would "kicking the can down the road"
- ie, overlooking its concerns in the agreement
just to get a deal with the US - be in India's
interests?
An agreement with the US is
essential for India's nuclear trade with that
country. It is also essential to get the Nuclear
Suppliers Group - a group of countries that seeks
to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons through the implementation of guidelines
for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports -
to lift its restrictions on nuclear trade with
India.
Yet, as Varadarajan pointed out,
the 123 Agreement "will form the template for
changes to the Nuclear Suppliers Group
guidelines". So backing down on core concerns and
kicking the can further down the road, as some
suggest, might not be the best strategy for India.
Postponement of tackling the concern will only
result in more goalposts being shifted. This is
evident from India's experience over the past two
years.
India and the US have entered the
home stretch in their effort to operationalize
their civilian nuclear energy cooperation, and
this last lap is proving to be more daunting than
expected.
Sudha Ramachandran is
an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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