India, U.S. agree to nuclear pact

[solid snake]

I'm least concerened about whatever India is getting.
Actually we'll only benefit from all these bypasses US is applying to please India...its paving way for us to get the same in time...be it from USA or other sources.

I agree, in the long run this deal is helping Pakistan. By hook or by crook, we'll counter whatever India has gained through this deal

 

[Neo]

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Indo-US nuclear deal a blow to non-proliferation: experts

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Business and political interests trumped the national security interests of the United States in the civil nuclear technology cooperation agreement, giving India more Indian bombs and the world less global restraint, according to two nuclear and security experts.

Daryl G Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association and Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for National Security at the Centre for American Progress, write in the current issue of the newsletter National Security that the 109th Congress jammed through a controversial nuclear trade bill that “blows a hole in the fabric of US nonproliferation law”.

The legislation makes an India-specific exemption to decades-old rules restricting civil nuclear commerce with states, such as India, that have refused to allow “full-scope” international safeguards over all of their nuclear facilities. The agreement leaves India free to keep its extensive and secret nuclear weapons and materials production complex off-limits. The partial inspections India will allow will be “all symbol, no substance”.

The two experts criticise Congress for spurning provisions that would have required commitments from India to restrain its production of nuclear weapons and nuclear bomb material. The legislation also overlooks the US obligation to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1172 of June 1998, which calls upon India and Pakistan to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, stop nuclear weapons deployments, and halt the production of nuclear bomb material. “From conception to passage, the new law threatens our global nonproliferaton obligations.”

The deal would give India the benefits of being a member of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty without being required to meet all of the responsibilities expected of responsible states. “India has been outside the international nuclear mainstream since it improperly used Canadian and US peaceful nuclear assistance to conduct its 1974 nuclear bomb test, refused to sign the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and conducted additional nuclear tests in 1998. India made its choice and, as a result, it has been cut off from most US civilian nuclear assistance since 1978 and most international assistance since 1992,” the two experts write.

Kimball and Cirincione accused both Republicans and Democrats of bearing “equal blame for this disaster”. The bill does not require the president to certify that US civil nuclear assistance will not aid India’s bomb programme. Foreign nuclear fuel supplies to India will free up its existing limited domestic capacity of uranium for both energy and weapons to be singularly devoted to arms production in the future. That could mean that India could increase its current production capacity from six to 10 additional nuclear bombs a year to several dozen per year. India already has enough material for some 60 to 100 nuclear bombs. Pakistan is sure to match that capability; China may reconsider its fissile production halt for weapons, they point out.

The two experts, while noting that a number of positive additions were made to the final legislation, stress that Congress and the administration have committed a “major nonproliferation error” and it will now be up to other states to weigh in and to fix the deep flaws in the arrangement. If Washington and New Delhi, as expected, conclude a formal agreement for nuclear cooperation and the IAEA approves a permanent safeguards plan with India, then other members of the Nuclear Supplier Group will have a chance to veto or modify the arrangement. For NSG states concerned about the fragility of the nonproliferation system and the adverse impact of the India nuclear deal, this is the time for them to stand up in defence of their security priorities and the future of the nuclear nonproliferation system.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\12\13\story_13-12-2006_pg7_43

 

[vnomad]

THE BIGGER PICTURE - It is a big deal
We must recognise that the US has done us a favour by lifting the nuclear embargo
BY MANOJ JOSHI



CRITICS OF the Indo-US nuclear deal are playing the game with loaded dice, weighted heavily with their anti-Americanism. The condemnation, some positively bilious, has been based on a selective reading of the new US nuclear cooperation law. Any analysis of the deal made, with the US depicted as an ‘enemy’ or ‘hostile’ actor, means that every word or phrase of the new US law can be seen as the imposition of an onerous condition or a hidden trap. So, efforts by the US to ensure that civil technology is used for the purpose claimed, are viewed as a sinister effort to spy on India’s nuclear technology. Say this much for the Left, they do know their politics well and clearly understand that the key American aim in giving India the extraordinary concession — of ending their 30-year-old successful embargo of our nuclear establishment — is to do with befriending India. And everyone knows that the Left does not want India and the US to be friends.
For 30 years, US laws, accepted by 45 other countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, banned the export of even a light bulb to any Indian nuclear establishment. An agreement that enables India to access nuclear raw material and technology from around the world is, therefore, not an every day event. More so, because it does so without any obligation on India to give up or restrict its nuclear weapons capability. As for the issue of spies who may come in the guise of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors: the military and civil parts of the nuclear establishment will be physically separated. The military parts will operate out of the Kalpakkam and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) complexes.

The obligations the US seeks are quite legitimate. These are rules and regulations that will assure the US and the NSG that the opening of civil nuclear trade to India will not, in anyway, aid India’s nuclear weapons capability. Considering India defied the world community and tested nuclear weapons in 1998, this is not an unreasonable expectation. Since our hearts are pure and military facilities will be in separate enclaves, there is no reason why we should worry about the intrusiveness of inspections.

What the red and saffron filter does not reveal is that the US has come more than half-way to accommodate India. Leave alone dropping the insistence that India “cap and roll back” its nuclear weapons programme, the US has actually laid the groundwork for intensive collaboration with India in the civil nuclear sphere. For example, much is being made of the fact that the Hyde Act does not mention the issue of reprocessing US-supplied nuclear fuel in India. As of today, the US prohibits this, regardless of the country. But, say officials, the very fact that it has not been mentioned in the legislation is the loophole that a subsequent technical ‘123 Agreement’ can be used to enable this. A clause in the Bill makes India the only country in the world that can have US reprocessing and enrichment technology, albeit conditionally.

Much has been made of annual certificates needed to continue cooperation. Actually on Indian insistence, “certification” has been changed to “assessment”, the difference being that negative reports will not lead to cessation of cooperation. Another claim of US’s bad faith is that it had the NSG inspection laws tightened to target India. G. Balachandran, a long-time analyst of the issue, says that the change in the rules were mooted in the NSG in mid2004, a year before the Indo-US nuclear deal, and approved by the outfit’s plenary in June 2005.

The opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal need to answer how they propose to meet the deficit of natural uranium that afflicts India’s civil nuclear power programme?

The shortage is not a matter of speculation. The mid-term appraisal document of the Tenth Five Year Plan states this. In July 2005, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, A. Gopalakrishnan, now a vocal critic of the deal, wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly: “at present the DAE (department of atomic energy) is beginning to face a serious shortage of natural uranium, even to fuel the 18 pwhr (pressurised heavy water reactors) currently under operation or construction.” This is a good place to examine the attitude of some of our retired scientists who are criticising the deal. All of them know how the US-led embargo crippled the Indian nuclear programme. They seem to be inspired by a sense of technological vengeance in insisting that India go it alone and prove its three-stage nuclear plan. This could well be technological hubris. Balachandran says India has just about enough natural uranium to run a 10,000 MW programme, sufficient to trigger the fast-breeder reactor programme using a plutoniumrich fuel to breed more plutonium. “If there are no imports, then everything hangs on the fast breeder reactor,” he says. “If, for some reason, this technology does not perform, we will be stuck at that level.” The only deal that will satisfy our scientists is one in which the US not only unconditionally gives in to all Indian demands, but also rewrites the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to accommodate India as a nuclear weapons State. This attitude can only be born out of dotage, or a wrenching awareness that their world will be changed forever. Instead of the cloistered institutions they ran with little accountability, India, in the changed circumstances, could well have a vast nuclear establishment with many new actors, including probably private sector companies, both Indian and foreign. Nuclear power research, today, is a cooperative affair, involving several countries and institutions — both private and public — primarily because of the costs associated, as well as a desire to spread the technological risks.

There is one last thought that needs to be addressed. In international relations, all State-to-State relations are between equals. When Prime Ministers and Presidents make joint statements and declarations, this principle operates. The reality is, however, that while all nations are sovereign equals, in the real world, geographic location, economic and military power, and resilience of political institutions create differentials.

It is on this template that we need to examine the Indo-US deal. So, while the July 18, 2005, statement and the PM’s statements in Parliament work on the belief that it is an agreement between sovereign equals, the practical procedures that the two countries work out cannot avoid reflecting the real differential. The US, the world’s largest economy and military power, is also a recognised nuclear weapons State under the NPT; India is a pariah State when it comes to nuclear weapons and technology, as well as a poor country in desperate need of energy.

The US, the lead State in maintaining a global embargo against States that have not signed the NPT, has been remarkably generous with India. Not only has it tacitly accepted India as a nuclear weapons State, it has explicitly agreed to lift its embargo against India’s civil nuclear programme in exchange for assurances that there are no leakages from India’s civil programme to the military. To see this as sinister or demeaning is either obtuse or perverse, or perhaps, a combination of both.

 

[Neo]

India's top nuclear scientists oppose US deal

NEW DELHI: December 16, 2006: India's top nuclear scientists have repeated their fears that a landmark nuclear deal with the United States will place limitations on the country's weapons programme, the media reported on Saturday.

The deal allows the export of nuclear fuel and technology to energy-hungry India for the first time since it first tested a nuclear device in 1974. US President George W. Bush is expected to sign the accord on Monday.

But the scientists said the final version of the bill, which reconciled versions of the legislation approved by the US House of Representatives and Senate, contained clauses that India had previously objected to.

"The act makes it explicit that if India conducts such tests, the nuclear co-operation will be terminated," the scientists said in a statement published by the Asian Age newspaper.

Three former chairmen of the country's Atomic Energy Commission were among those who signed the statement.

Under the deal announced by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush in July 2005, India, a non-signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), agreed to place its civilian-use reactors under global scrutiny.

The agreement includes a set of international safeguards to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, and to which India must adhere.

The scientists also raised objections to other clauses, which require India's participation in US efforts to "dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran" in its alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

"These stipulations... constitute intrusion into India's independent decision-making and policy matters," the statement said.

The scientists have appealed to the government to convey their concerns to the US administration.

Prime Minister Singh is expected to make a statement on the agreement in parliament on Monday, after which lawmakers will discuss the deal.

The deal still requires the endorsement of the influential 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.

 

[Neo]

What’s the Indo-US N-deal for?

By M.J. Akbar

AMERICA is the oldest, rather than the youngest, country of the modern world. My definition of modern hinges on a great modern concept, democracy. There were faults in American democracy, but for more than two centuries, America has found the creative link between national independence and individual freedom to create the world’s most successful economic and military power. You cannot enter the modern age simply by building highways as good as America’s. You also need a democracy as good as, or even better than, America’s.

The spine of democracy is the law. Governments come and go, and may the traffic be incessant, but the law is permanent. Governments can legislate, or amend legislation, but once that is done, governments become subservient to the law.

It is curious that one of the most vocal advocates of world democracy, a man ready to spend billions in war ostensibly to create it, should miss such a basic principle. President George Bush sought to allay Indian concerns over the civilian nuclear partnership that he signed into American law, by explaining that a president makes foreign policy, not Congress. For reasons that can only be excused by either ignorance or indifference, large sections of the Indian elite, including, sadly, the media, immediately congratulated themselves on yet another “victory”.

If the American president makes foreign policy, why did Bush need Congress approval of his deal with India? The president is head of the executive, and he certainly has much leeway in his management of government, but he is not above the Congress. If the Congress defines the parameters, then the president can only break them at the risk of impeachment.

The narrative of the Indo-US deal now has been bound with hard covers, and the covers are the Hyde Act. The July 18 agreement of 2005 is a limp document that may or may not be in the appendix. Bush has less than 25 months in office; the text of the Hyde Act, unless amended, will be in force long after Bush and this columnist are in their graves. Bush is an interlocutor; the Hyde Act is the lock that will seal the discourse for a generation if not more.

It is specious to suggest, as some in the Delhi government have done, that the Hyde Act is binding only on the United States. Isn’t that the point? We did not do this deal to supply nuclear fuel to ourselves, did we? We did it to get American fuel and technology, and if the United States cannot give it because we are in violation of some aspect of Hyde’s tough and unambiguous demands, then we are up a creek without a paddle.

What are the main objectives of the Hyde Act? They are written in clean English. One stated objective is non-proliferation. It avers that as long as India is outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which we have not signed, it will remain a challenge to the “goals of non-proliferation”. How does the Act propose to achieve this goal? By seeking to “halt the increase in nuclear weapons arsenals in South Asia and to promote their reduction and eventual elimination”.

Halt, reduce and eliminate. Remember these three words.

Those who insist that the deal is only about civilian nuclear energy are surely literate, and one presumes that they have imperatives that persuade them to gloss over such phrases. “The costs to the US appear minimal. The price India will have to pay may well be total loss of control over its future polices,” M.R. Srinivasan, member of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, told the December 21 issue of Science magazine.

The Hyde legislation calls for Indo-American cooperation between scientists to develop a common non-proliferation programme — for the rest of the world, that is, not for America. America continues to exercise its right to test, and is working to build miniature nuclear weapons whose fallout can be contained, making them usable in conventional war.

It may be of mild interest that if we agree to this deal, we will also be committing ourselves to the elimination of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons along with ours. Perhaps optimists in Delhi believe that after he solves Kashmir, President Pervez Musharraf will discuss a nuclear-free South Asia, but somehow I doubt it.

If the first objective is corrosive, the second is colonial. It wants Indian foreign policy to be “congruent” to America’s, and expects “greater political and material” support in the realisation of American goals. I doubt, if during the talks, any Indian negotiator suggested that America might want to align itself with Indian foreign policy goals.

That would be the language of equals, and this is an unequal relationship.

Sometimes the fog of peace is more dense than the fog of war, but there is a route map to guide us through to US strategy. It is a country called “Iran”.

“Congruence” is an untidy word with very neat implications. Bilateral agreements rarely, if ever, are third-country specific. Here is what the deal expects India to do vis-a-vis Iran: “full and active cooperation to dissuade, isolate and if necessary sanction and contain Iran”. The text asks India to keep in step with US policy on Iran, and quotes, approvingly, the votes by India against Iran in the IAEA board of governors as evidence of such compliance.

Iran is not the only country with which America has a problem about nuclear intentions. Iran does not have a weapon yet, although it is clearly making a serious effort to get one. North Korea has weapons. There is no specific linkage to North Korea. Why? One possible answer: Washington does not contemplate war with North Korea, but retains the option for an assault on Iran in 2007.

Hyde is the stick to Bush’s carrot. But both are on the same side. Bush would certainly expect “political and material” support from India if he started military action against Iran. Don’t underestimate the “material” part.

Dedicated astrologers apart, everyone concedes that predictions are a speculative science. There is something about the start of a new year, however, that makes such a temptation irresistible. The current language of defeat, or “neither winning nor losing”, may have lulled us into the belief that Washington’s military options are off the table. The Iraq Study Group, headed by as patrician a Republican as James Baker, a virtual uncle to George, has suggested that Washington starts talks with Damascus and Tehran, not war.

But there is a minority — and, I stress, speculative view — that a last-ditch desire to salvage a miracle out of the mess, might tempt Bush, Tony Blair and Ehud Olmert into gambler’s corner. All three have tasted unexpected and even humiliating defeat in 2006, and have one chance before the triumvirate disintegrates with Blair’s departure in early summer. Their fortunes might suddenly transcend if they were able to announce, at the end of a series of lightning strikes, that they had eliminated Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There is also a technical reason, which all but a few experts have missed. The destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities would become too dangerous, apparently, after November, because the fallout would then reach Chernobyl levels.

I spoke to Dr Steven Wright, who presented a paper on this subject at a security conference in Geneva in the first week of December: “Yes, there is indeed a technical issue at play which no one I have come across has picked up on. In essence, it is the loading of the Russian manufactured and supplied uranium fuel rods for the Bushehr reactor. Air strikes cannot be carried out after they have been loaded into the reactor due to the fallout being akin to Chernobyl.

“Therefore, they need to be carried out before that time, if at all. The Bushehr reactor, despite being a light water reactor, still has a proliferation risk as the uranium rods can be removed a mere four months after loading and a crude plutonium weapon can be fashioned from it. There is a common myth that light water reactors are proliferation proof. If the objective is to prevent Iran from developing such a weapon, action would need to be carried out before this stage is reached.”

There are many reasons why war should not happen. Bush, Blair and Olmert may want one, but their publics are disenchanted, and their legislatures more circumspect. The Pentagon is stretched taut, as are the British armed forces. The impact on oil prices, and the region, would be catastrophic. But dreams of glory have this awkward ability to overwhelm common sense. It has happened before, in Iraq. India was not tested three years ago because Bush declared a premature victory. If there is another American “shock and awe” invasion, we will find out whether India is still independent or has become congruent.

The writer is editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, New Delhi.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/01/07/ed.htm#4

 

[Neo]

Thursday, January 11, 2007

India could dump US nuclear deal: Saran

NEW DELHI: India will walk away from a civilian nuclear deal with the United States if New Delhi’s concerns are not allayed, its envoy said on Wednesday.

It was critical the deal allowed India to reprocess spent US nuclear fuel and did not stop it conducting nuclear tests, said Shyam Saran, India’s special envoy to the negotiations. “This process will have to continue and there are certain very important issues which would have to be addressed and these are difficult issues,” Saran said in a speech to diplomats and strategic affairs experts. “Can we walk away from this deal if it does not correspond to our national interest? Obviously we have to walk away from this and we will walk away from it.”

President George W Bush last month signed into law a bill approved by Congress allowing the deal to go through, a major step towards letting India buy US nuclear reactors and fuel for the first time in 30 years.

But Congress attached several conditions to the law which have not gone down well with New Delhi, and the two countries have returned to negotiations.

Saran said these conditions were not acceptable to India and this had been conveyed to the US. “Reprocessing of spent fuel will be very important, very critical. Without that it may be very difficult for us to take this forward,” he said.

“While we are prepared to maintain a unilateral moratorium on fresh testing, we are not prepared to convert a policy commitment into a legal commitment,” he said, referring to India’s voluntary decision not to conduct nuclear tests.

Saran said he remained confident the two countries could still manage to conclude a deal. “We have dealt with very difficult issues in the past and we have dealt with them very successfully. The mindset on both sides is of problem-solving rather than taking very rigid positions.” reuters

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\01\11\story_11-1-2007_pg7_33