Pakistan cocks a snook at India’s nuclear deal - Indian Punchline
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson at a regular press conference on Monday sidestepped the funding arrangement for the major nuclear power project coming up in Karachi but asserted that the Sino-Pak nuclear cooperation falls squarely within the four walls of international law.
A day later, Reuters has disclosed in an exclusive report, here, from Islamabad citing Pakistani officials that China has committed a loan of “at least” $6.5 billion for the project that is estimated to cost $9.59 billion. Yes, a cool $6.5 billion.
This puts Delhi in a quandry and raises some fundamental issues regarding the US-India 2008 nuclear cooperation agreement. Delhi apparently protested about the Karachi nuclear plant publicly and through diplomatic channels, but there has been no takers in the international community and it has been roundly snubbed.
There is no alternative now but to accept the fait accompli. This should be a salutary lesson for Delhi on double standards in international diplomacy.
It simply wasn’t a principled stance for Delhi to have insisted that Pakistan cannot have an Nuclear Supply Group [NSG] waiver, as India got, and that Pakistan also should not have any scope to nuclear power projects with foreign collaboration. Who are we to dictate such things?
Many members of the NSG who reluctantly went along with the waiver for India in 2008 didn’t really like what they were doing and have now chosen to remain indifferent and are moving on when India began shouting ‘wolf,wolf’.
But the US’s passivity vis-a-vis the Karachi project takes the cake. Given the fact that NSG was originally created by Washington only for the sake of imposing an embargo on technology transfer to India by friendly countries (especially the former Soviet Union), the US, when it apparently began feeling it should be friendly toward India, circa mid-1990s, should also have dismantled the NSG.
That’s what as a genuine friend of India President George W. Bush (whom we all loved) should have done. Instead, he led us like a pack of monkeys through the labyrinthine processes of the 2008 nuclear deal.
The result of all this is plain to see today. We’ve tied ourselves in knots. For a start, Delhi was compelled by Washington to bring in as underpinning for the 2008 nuclear deal entirely new legislation regarding nuclear safety so that American nuclear companies could do business without having to be held culpable for accidents. To be sure, Washington had the Bhopal tragedy on its mind.
We obeyed the pre-condition, but, in the event, the new legislation turned out to be unpalatable, ironically, to the nuclear vendors in America because the Indian lawmakers precisely saw to it that country will never again be subjected to the treachery that it faced during the Bhopal tragedy.
And the legislation is now stuck in the UPA government’s throat, which it is unable to spit out. By God, if it is a Third Front government after the 2014 poll, the legislation being ‘tweaked’ to suit the American vendors is going to be virtually impossible.
The resulting ‘nuclear stalemate’ has cast a shadow on the US-Indian relationship, since Washington is, bluntly speaking, pissed off that it is yet to sell a single reactor to India and make some money, leave alone garner the $30 billion business in nuclear commerce that it thought it was cornering in a very near term out of the the nuclear deal.
Realizing that there is only a remote possibility of securing business anytime soon in the nuclear power projects in India, the Obama administration has also incrementally began losing interest in redeeming the US’ pledges of getting India into the technology control regimes, the UN security council, transferring ENR technology, and what not. No one talks about such things anymore, because it is all so embarrassing. Besides, President Barack Obama happens to be not a great fan of the 2008 nuclear deal, given his genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament.
Meanwhile, the Indian leadership’s zest — for entirely incomprehensible reasons — to create a ‘level playing field’ for the American nuclear vendors, has turned out to be a supreme act of self-sacrifice. Its net result has been to effectively shut the door on the ongoing Russian-Indian nuclear cooperation as well. What a right royal cock-up!
But in all this, what is so very, very painful to swallow tonight is that without any of these gyrations by our elites to negotiate the nuclear deal, their Pakistani counterparts are merrily coasting ahead to undertake such a massive nuclear power project in Karachi and no one cares two hoots in Washington or Vienna or Timbuktu. Don’t we all have the same DNA and yet what is it that makes the Pakistani elites so smart?
Where are the Indian celebrities who negotiated the nuclear deal and became urban cowboys on our magazine covers in 2008? Someone — anyone — in Delhi (or in Kolkatta) should explain what this entire slice of the UPA government’s diplomatic history has been about during the 3-year period since the signing of the US-India defence framework agreement on July 18, 2005 — nay, let me correct, during this entire eight-year period till the vastraharan and cavity search of Devyani Khobragade in New York two weeks ago. This card game has turned out to be like the one Yudhishtira was forced into playing.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson at a regular press conference on Monday sidestepped the funding arrangement for the major nuclear power project coming up in Karachi but asserted that the Sino-Pak nuclear cooperation falls squarely within the four walls of international law.
A day later, Reuters has disclosed in an exclusive report, here, from Islamabad citing Pakistani officials that China has committed a loan of “at least” $6.5 billion for the project that is estimated to cost $9.59 billion. Yes, a cool $6.5 billion.
This puts Delhi in a quandry and raises some fundamental issues regarding the US-India 2008 nuclear cooperation agreement. Delhi apparently protested about the Karachi nuclear plant publicly and through diplomatic channels, but there has been no takers in the international community and it has been roundly snubbed.
There is no alternative now but to accept the fait accompli. This should be a salutary lesson for Delhi on double standards in international diplomacy.
It simply wasn’t a principled stance for Delhi to have insisted that Pakistan cannot have an Nuclear Supply Group [NSG] waiver, as India got, and that Pakistan also should not have any scope to nuclear power projects with foreign collaboration. Who are we to dictate such things?
Many members of the NSG who reluctantly went along with the waiver for India in 2008 didn’t really like what they were doing and have now chosen to remain indifferent and are moving on when India began shouting ‘wolf,wolf’.
But the US’s passivity vis-a-vis the Karachi project takes the cake. Given the fact that NSG was originally created by Washington only for the sake of imposing an embargo on technology transfer to India by friendly countries (especially the former Soviet Union), the US, when it apparently began feeling it should be friendly toward India, circa mid-1990s, should also have dismantled the NSG.
That’s what as a genuine friend of India President George W. Bush (whom we all loved) should have done. Instead, he led us like a pack of monkeys through the labyrinthine processes of the 2008 nuclear deal.
The result of all this is plain to see today. We’ve tied ourselves in knots. For a start, Delhi was compelled by Washington to bring in as underpinning for the 2008 nuclear deal entirely new legislation regarding nuclear safety so that American nuclear companies could do business without having to be held culpable for accidents. To be sure, Washington had the Bhopal tragedy on its mind.
We obeyed the pre-condition, but, in the event, the new legislation turned out to be unpalatable, ironically, to the nuclear vendors in America because the Indian lawmakers precisely saw to it that country will never again be subjected to the treachery that it faced during the Bhopal tragedy.
And the legislation is now stuck in the UPA government’s throat, which it is unable to spit out. By God, if it is a Third Front government after the 2014 poll, the legislation being ‘tweaked’ to suit the American vendors is going to be virtually impossible.
The resulting ‘nuclear stalemate’ has cast a shadow on the US-Indian relationship, since Washington is, bluntly speaking, pissed off that it is yet to sell a single reactor to India and make some money, leave alone garner the $30 billion business in nuclear commerce that it thought it was cornering in a very near term out of the the nuclear deal.
Realizing that there is only a remote possibility of securing business anytime soon in the nuclear power projects in India, the Obama administration has also incrementally began losing interest in redeeming the US’ pledges of getting India into the technology control regimes, the UN security council, transferring ENR technology, and what not. No one talks about such things anymore, because it is all so embarrassing. Besides, President Barack Obama happens to be not a great fan of the 2008 nuclear deal, given his genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament.
Meanwhile, the Indian leadership’s zest — for entirely incomprehensible reasons — to create a ‘level playing field’ for the American nuclear vendors, has turned out to be a supreme act of self-sacrifice. Its net result has been to effectively shut the door on the ongoing Russian-Indian nuclear cooperation as well. What a right royal cock-up!
But in all this, what is so very, very painful to swallow tonight is that without any of these gyrations by our elites to negotiate the nuclear deal, their Pakistani counterparts are merrily coasting ahead to undertake such a massive nuclear power project in Karachi and no one cares two hoots in Washington or Vienna or Timbuktu. Don’t we all have the same DNA and yet what is it that makes the Pakistani elites so smart?
Where are the Indian celebrities who negotiated the nuclear deal and became urban cowboys on our magazine covers in 2008? Someone — anyone — in Delhi (or in Kolkatta) should explain what this entire slice of the UPA government’s diplomatic history has been about during the 3-year period since the signing of the US-India defence framework agreement on July 18, 2005 — nay, let me correct, during this entire eight-year period till the vastraharan and cavity search of Devyani Khobragade in New York two weeks ago. This card game has turned out to be like the one Yudhishtira was forced into playing.
