Put Nuclear Deal On Hold

Part I

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, September 8, 2007

Since signing the Indo-US nuclear deal on July 18, 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly slipped on promises to the nation. Every time he has been unable to keep an assurance, he has sought to devise a revised gauge to maintain the semblance of an unbroken word.

Singh’s changing measures mirror the shifting terms of a deal that has proven increasingly divisive in India. Unlike in the US, where criticism has been limited to some quarters and to just one issue — non-proliferation — the deal has attracted wide-ranging concerns across India. And unlike the bipartisan political support it has drawn in America — both inside and outside the US Congress — the deal has badly split India’s political establishment.

The most striking difference, however, relates to legislative oversight. At every stage, US President George W. Bush has had to bow to the congressional prerogative to vet any arrangement with India. Bush has even made the grant of reprocessing right to India conditional on the congressional approval of a separate agreement that is to be negotiated in the years ahead under Section 131 of the US Atomic Energy Act (AEC). By contrast, the US granted Japan and EURATOM the actual right to reprocess upfront through an implementing accord accompanying a Section 123 agreement, not through a separate Section 131 deal years later.

The Indian Parliament, on the other hand, has been reduced to being a mere spectator on the deal. The PM insists that Parliament has no role on the Indo-US 123 agreement other than to be merely informed about it. Parliament similarly will be shut out from the subsequent Section 131 agreement on reprocessing. Yet Singh affirms that he has “kept Parliament fully in the picture at various stages of our negotiations with the United States” by making “several statements.”

Singh’s concept of public accountability, in other words, centres on making statements in Parliament at his own sweet will, merely to convey what has been agreed to and signed, without having to bow to the will of the national legislature. The PM has yet to disclose how much money his government spent to lobby members of the US Congress to pass the enabling legislation on the deal — the Hyde Act. Given that the US legislature had never previously passed a country-specific law laden with so many conditions to permit cooperation in just one narrow area as it did through the Hyde Act, it is a surprise that no one has been asked to account for the multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign New Delhi coordinated on Capitol Hill last year — a campaign whose outcome seeks to saddle India with onerous long-term requirements, many of which have little to do with civil nuclear cooperation.

New Delhi has blithely gone along with the shifting terms of a deal that is set to attract even more India-specific conditions as it traverses the remaining stages. The best course for India at this point would be to put the deal on hold while continuing to build a stronger relationship with the US in other areas. After all, the record since July 2005 does not redound to India’s credit. Consider the latest major goofs:

● No provision for international arbitration in case of a dispute.

The 123 agreement has no provision for an arbitral tribunal, despite India’s bitter experience over an earlier 123 accord with the US signed in 1963. The 1963 agreement was not only more protective of Indian interests, but also free of any Hyde Act-style overarching legal framework. Yet, 15 years later, the US effectively gutted the accord by retroactively rewriting its terms through a new domestic law.

In the latest 123 agreement, India has gained the right to be merely consulted but has granted America the right to take all final decisions.

Contrast this with the Japan-US 123 agreement in which Tokyo’s interests are protected through Article 14: “If any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of this Agreement is not settled by negotiation, mediation, conciliation or other similar procedure, the parties may agree to submit such dispute to an arbitral tribunal which shall be composed of three arbitrators appointed in accordance with the provisions of this paragraph. Each party shall designate one arbitrator who may be a national of its country and the arbitrators so designated shall elect a third, a national of a third country, who shall be the Chairman. If, within 30 days of the request for arbitration, either side has not designated an arbitrator, either side may request the President of the International Court of Justice to appoint an arbitrator. The same procedure shall apply if, within 30 days of the designation or appointment of the second arbitrator, the third arbitrator has not been elected, provided that the third arbitrator so appointed shall not be a national of the country of either party. A majority of the members of the tribunal shall constitute the quorum, and all decisions shall require the concurrence of two arbitrators. The decisions of the tribunal shall be binding on the parties.”   

The terms, “arbitration,” “mediation,” “conciliation,” “tribunal” and “International Court of Justice,” do not find mention in the latest Indo-US 123 accord, which only provides for toothless “consultations.” The agreement’s Article 15, titled “Settlement of Disputes”, merely states: “Any dispute concerning the interpretation or implementation of the provisions of this agreement shall be promptly negotiated by the parties with a view to resolving that dispute.”

Japan is a close ally of the US, yet it sought an arbitral tribunal. India is still grappling with outstanding issues from its earlier 123 agreement with the US, including an accumulating spent-fuel stockpile, yet its negotiators have placed it at the mercy of the supplier-state. 

● Primacy of American law has been upheld.

Nothing better illustrates this than the way the Indo-US agreement copies, word to word, Article 2(1) of the China-US 123 accord, but only to drop its critical final sentence — that the “parties recognize, with respect to the observance of this agreement, the principle of international law that provides that a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.”

This omission is because the Indo-US agreement, as both sides have admitted, is anchored in the Hyde Act. Instead of treating that Act as a red rag to a bull, New Delhi has bragged how the 123 agreement is within the framework of that legislation. In the words of National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, “As far as we are concerned, we haven’t breached the Hyde Act … We have seen to [it] that no law is broken.” And US Undersecretary Nicholas Burns has seconded that by saying “we have the Hyde Act. And we kept reminding the Indian side, and they were good enough to negotiate on this basis, that anything we did had to fall within and respect the legal guidelines that Congress had set forth.”

Having accepted the supremacy of US law, Singh has been left with only the provision for “consultations” to flaunt. “Both Parties have agreed to take a number of factors into account in their consultations so that the scope for precipitate or unilateral action is reduced,” the PM told Parliament.

The 1963 agreement also provided for consultations and for taking into account the economic and other effects of any precipitate action, yet the US unilaterally walked out of the accord. Had there been a provision in that agreement for an arbitral tribunal, would India have been unable to reprocess the Tarapur spent fuel to this day?

● India has conceded ground beyond the requirements of even American law.

For reasons unexplained, Indian negotiators have agreed to some terms that go beyond the requirements of any US law — the Hyde Act and AEC included. This may have happened because the 123 agreement has been largely drafted by US lawyers, with Narayanan admitting that while “there were State Department lawyers” in the negotiations, no lawyer was present on the Indian side because “our country is not litigious like that.”

Yet today, in response to the national furore, the government has drafted a top lawyer like Kapil Sibal to defend the deal in public. Shouldn’t his services have been sought when they were most needed — during the negotiations with the US?

Here are three examples of how Indian concessions go beyond even the demands of US law.

1. Unrestricted right of return. India shouldn’t have accepted that the supplier-state is at liberty to terminate cooperation retroactively through the right to demand the return of all exported items and materials. After all, Indian officials had been saying in background briefings until last May that any formal acknowledgement of the American right to seek return on account of a US-determined Indian non-compliance with non-proliferation conditions would turn India’s voluntary test moratorium into a binding prohibition through a double instrument — a bilateral agreement atop the Hyde Act.

Yet, in finally succumbing to the US demand, Indian negotiators agreed to incorporate the “right of return” in the 123-agreement text in such a way as to give carte blanche to the American side. Under Section 123(a)(4) of AEC, America’s “right of return” is limited to two specific causes — “if the cooperating party detonates a nuclear-explosive device, or terminates or abrogates an agreement providing for IAEA safeguards”.

But under the Indo-US agreement under Section 123, America has been handed an unrestricted right to demand return by citing any reason. All it requires to invoke that right is for a notice to be “delivered to the other party on or before the date of termination of this agreement.”

2. Open-ended right to suspend all supplies. The unrestricted “right of return” is linked to the open-ended suspension and termination provisos in the 123 agreement. The basis for suspension or cessation of cooperation is not merely limited to any violation of the agreement. Cooperation can be suspended or terminated for reasons other than a material breach of the agreement’s terms or non-compliance with IAEA safeguards. This leeway has been fashioned to hold India’s feet to the US non-proliferation fire.

Under the agreement’s Article 14.2, the supplier-state enjoys an unfettered right to suspend cooperation at will and leave the recipient-state high and dry. The Article states: “The party seeking termination has the right to cease further cooperation under this agreement if it determines that a mutually acceptable resolution of outstanding issues has not been possible or cannot be achieved through consultations.” So the US can either hold consultations or even dispense with them if it believed the desired outcome “cannot be achieved through consultations.”

More importantly, although termination is to take effect at the end of a one-year notice period, the US is empowered to “cease further cooperation” forthwith. All that is required is that the “party giving notice of termination shall provide the reasons for seeking such termination.” But with the reasons for termination not defined in the agreement, the cause can be any. This makes a mockery of New Delhi’s claim of having secured an uninterrupted fuel-supply assurance.

Contrast the unlimited right in the 123 agreement to suspend or terminate cooperation with the limits set by US law — Section 129 of AEC — wherein precise triggers are specified for cessation of exports to a non-nuclear-weapons state (India is classified as one in this deal): (i) a nuclear-device detonation; (ii) a material breach or termination of IAEA safeguards; (iii) a material violation of the 123 accord; or (iv) proliferation-related transfers by the recipient state to a third country.

Even the Japan-US 123 agreement, despite its arbitration safety measure, does not provide for an unlimited right of suspension or termination. Under its Article 12, the triggers for cessation of cooperation are restricted to non-compliance either with the agreement’s own provisions or with “the decisions of the arbitral tribunal.” India, however, has merrily reposed its implicit faith in the same supplier that walked out from the earlier Indo-US 123 agreement.

3. All foreign-origin spent fuel to be routed through a single facility. American law seeks to regulate only spent fuel that is of US-origin. Yet, after a similar assertion by Burns, Singh admitted in Parliament on August 13, 2007, that the new Indian reprocessing facility to be built at American instance will be not just for US-origin fuel but for all “foreign nuclear material under IAEA safeguards.”

That is odd. Why should India grant America a say in where it reprocesses spent fuel generated from imports from countries other than the US? Given that the new facility will be US-approved in terms of its design, why hand Washington a veto on where India reprocesses other foreign-origin fuel? Considering the frequent outages and breakdowns in any reprocessing plant due to its handling of highly unsafe spent fuel, India’s decision to route all foreign nuclear material through a single such facility unduly limits its options.

(To be continued)

© Asian Age, 2007

In A Nuclear Bind

Part II

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, September 9, 2007

A cognitive disconnect bedevils official claims over the nuclear deal. The avowed rationale is nuclear energy, yet in reality the deal can be of little help to India’s growing energy needs. Even with the import of a number of multibillion-dollar reactors, capital-intensive nuclear power’s share in India’s total electricity generation is likely to remain unimpressively small because the contribution of other energy sources will continue to rise faster (and more cheaply).

The deal actually is being driven by divergent US and Indian objectives. While India sees it as a path to closer engagement with the US, the deal for Washington is anchored in non-proliferation. As Undersecretary Nicholas Burns has put it, “within 25 years, I think 90 to 95 per cent of their entire [nuclear] establishment will be fully safeguarded. So the choice is: Should we isolate India for the next 35 years, or bring it in partially now and nearly totally in the future? I think that’s an easy choice for us to make strategically.”

● 123 Agreement likely to bind India indefinitely.

Burns’ statement may explain why unlike America’s most other 123 agreements that specify expiry in 30 years, the one with India is for an initial term of 40 years but is to continue in force infinitely in 10-year intervals until either party elects to end the accord. Given the US objective to tether India lastingly to the non-proliferation regime and the permanence of India’s own obligations to open its entire civil nuclear programme to international inspections, the agreement, once in force, will bind New Delhi indefinitely. An imports dependency instilled by the agreement would also serve as a disincentive to India electing to withdraw, say, after 40 years.

The Japan-US 123 accord provides that at the “request of either party, the parties shall consult with each other whether to amend this agreement or replace it with a new agreement.” In contrast, the Indo-US agreement permits only amendment, not replacement.

● A new motif of Indian diplomatic naiveté.

While America’s Hyde Act has gained notoriety for seeking to apply the principle of extraterritorial jurisdiction to regulate India’s conduct in areas unrelated to nuclear energy, the bilateral 123 agreement shows Indian diplomacy in unflattering light.

If the Hyde Act is a symbol of congressional condescension toward India, the 123 agreement epitomizes how Indian diplomacy continues to fare poorly at the negotiating table. Indeed, the agreement is a painful reminder of India living up to Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana’s saying: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not only have Indian negotiators failed to safeguard India’s interests in this agreement, as highlighted in yesterday’s article, but New Delhi also has been left clutching at straws, as the examples below show.

● Cosmetic corrective measures.

The PM told Parliament that the 123 agreement “endorsed the right of India to take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supply.” The fact is that the agreement not only fails to define what “corrective measures,” if any, India could undertake, but also stops India unequivocally from embarking on correction that would matter.

When Manmohan Singh went back on his original pledge “never to accept discrimination” and agreed through the “Separation Plan” to permanent, legally immutable international inspections of the type applicable only to non-nuclear-weapons states, he assured Parliament in March 2006 that the perpetual safeguards would be tied to perpetual fuel supply. But the123 accord, which he says is “signed and sealed,” represents another breach of promise because it negates the link between perpetual safeguards and perpetual fuel supply.

First, the agreement records that India’s safeguards obligations are irrevocably final and would survive even if the accord were prematurely terminated by one side. Second, it carries absolutely no reference to the continuation of India’s safeguards obligations being contingent on perpetual fuel supply. And third, the agreement explicitly blocks India from ever undertaking real correction in response to a fuel supply cut-off — the lifting of IAEA safeguards.

Put simply, India has willingly forfeited the right to enforce perpetual fuel supply through the threat to end IAEA inspections. Little surprise thus that the agreement in its Article I “Definitions” defines well-understood terms but not “corrective measures.” As Burns has clarified, none of the fuel assurances in the 123 accord “contradicts or conflicts with the legal right of any American President” to terminate supply or invoke the right to demand the return of stockpiled fuel if India violated the stipulated conditions.

● Full cooperation becomes a mere concept.

The PM assured Parliament on August 17, 2006, that in keeping with the original deal’s commitment, he would insist on the “removal of restrictions on all aspects of cooperation and technology transfers pertaining to civil nuclear energy, ranging from nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, to reprocessing spent fuel.” Lest there be any ambiguity, he added: “We will not agree to any dilution that would prevent us from securing the benefits of full civil nuclear cooperation as amplified above.”

A year later, full cooperation has been reduced to a mere idea to be dangled before the nation like a carrot. “The concept of full civil nuclear cooperation has been clearly enshrined in this Agreement,” Singh told Parliament last month.

Look at the absurdity of the situation: India has agreed to build a special reprocessing facility that meets US expectations, but it will not be in a position to import any components for this safeguarded plant because its negotiators failed to persuade America to relax civil reprocessing and enrichment sanctions. Yet as the Hyde Act’s explanatory statement notes, civil reprocessing and enrichment cooperation “is not restricted” but “agreements for cooperation must specify if such cooperation is to take place.” Articles 5 and 6 of the Japan-US 123 agreement, for example, permit transfer of civil reprocessing and enrichment equipment. The US signed a special agreement with Australia in 2000 to facilitate collaboration in civil laser enrichment, based on the Silex technology.

(To be continued)

© Asian Age, 2007

Wool Pulled Over India’s Eyes

Part III

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, September 10, 2007

There would have been no political uproar over the nuclear deal had the prime minister taken on board all important stakeholders on an issue centred on the future of India’s most-prized strategic asset — its nuclear programme. Acquiescence to the deal’s shifting goalposts also stoked controversy.

Undaunted by the conditions-laden Hyde Act, New Delhi went ahead and concluded an ambiguously formulated 123 agreement with a country that has a record of gutting even carefully crafted international treaties and bilateral accords, including an earlier 123 pact with India. The US can happily live with ambiguities in the latest 123 agreement because the accord — a requirement only under American law — carries no force under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and, in any event, it confers enforceable rights just on the supplier-state. How willingly India ceded ground can be seen from the reprocessing issue.

● Illusive reprocessing right.

Reprocessing is at the heart of India’s plans to build long-term energy security. The PM had pledged to secure an unqualified right to reprocess spent fuel. Indian nuclear chief Anil Kakodkar even called India’s right to reprocess “non-negotiable.”

India ended up, however, making concessions beyond its Separation Plan merely to obtain an empty theoretical right to reprocess. The practical right to reprocess is to be separately negotiated in the future. Like on full cooperation, India settled for a conceptual entitlement than for an actual right.

The Separation Plan, whose contents were negotiated with Washington and presented to Parliament, had specified only two reprocessing-related actions: (i) “India is willing to accept safeguards in the campaign mode after 2010 in respect of the Tarapur Power Reactor Fuel Reprocessing (PREFRE) Plant”; and (ii) the Tarapur and Rajasthan spent-fuel storage pools “would be made available for safeguards with appropriate phasing between 2006-2009.”

Why did India go beyond the Separation Plan in agreeing to sideline PREFRE and build an expensive new facility at its own cost? According to the 123 agreement, to bring its reprocessing right “into effect, India will establish a new national reprocessing facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards, and the Parties will agree on arrangements and procedures under which such reprocessing or other alteration in form or content will take place in this new facility.”

India has agreed not only to build a new dedicated facility, but also, as Manmohan Singh admitted, to route all spent fuel of foreign-origin through that plant. PREFRE thus will be used only for safeguarded indigenous fuel. This concession symbolizes yet another breach of assurance to Parliament.

According to the US government, it will be years before India can hope to secure the actual right to reprocess — New Delhi has to first build the dedicated facility and then negotiate with Washington a separate Section 131 reprocessing agreement. At his July 27, 2007, news conference, Burns was clear: (i) there is no timeframe within which the US intends to grant India the operational consent to reprocess; and (ii) before negotiations on the “arrangements and procedures” under Section 131 of AEC can begin, India has first to build the new “state-of-the-art” reprocessing facility to US satisfaction.

Yet the PM speciously told Parliament on August 13, 2007, that the right to reprocess has already been “secured upfront,” going to the extent of calling it a “permanent consent.” If Singh wishes to see an agreement with an operational consent to reprocess, he could look up the 1987 Japan-US accord, which came into force the following year.

The Japan-US 123 accord was accompanied by a nine-page “implementing agreement” which gave effect to “advance, long-term consent for reprocessing, transfers, alteration and storage of nuclear material” to Tokyo by spelling out the various reprocessing-related arrangements. In his message to Congress, President Ronald Reagan said, “These arrangements should enable Japan to plan for its long-term energy needs on a more assured, predictable basis…”

Shouldn’t New Delhi have also insisted on a “more assured, predictable basis” of cooperation through a similar operational right to reprocess? Why did it agree to defer operational consent to the future, to be worked out under Section 131, which is titled “Subsequent Arrangements”? While the 123 agreement states that negotiations on the subsequent arrangements “will begin within six months of a request by either party and will be concluded within one year” thereafter, the arrangements have to pass muster with the US Congress, which under Section 131 is empowered to adopt a concurrent resolution blocking such a plan.

Couldn’t nuclear India have secured a 123 deal with the US on terms at least similar to those granted to non-nuclear Japan? Like a parent calming a demanding kid, the US placated the Indian government by handing the consent-in-principle lollipop.

● Yet another stage has been added to the deal.

After more than two years, the deal has completed just two of the five obligatory stages. But now, through the 123 agreement, a sixth stage has been added — a separate Section 131 agreement on reprocessing.

Furthermore, the sequencing of the next steps has now been changed to New Delhi’s disadvantage. As the July 27, 2007, separate Indian and US fact-sheets revealed, New Delhi has agreed to first conclude an IAEA safeguards agreement before the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group even attempts to carve out an India exemption from its 1992 export guidelines.

While America legislated a conditional export-control exemption for India without awaiting the safeguards pact, the US-led NSG will follow a different principle. Washington will seek to ensure that the NSG does not make an exemption on terms less restrictive than those set by the US Congress. The Hyde Act stipulates that the NSG exemption for India should neither be less stringent than what the Act itself prescribes, nor take effect before the final congressional consent to the deal. The latter rider is intended to ensure that other suppliers do not gain a head-start over US businesses.

But look at the implications of New Delhi’s climbdown on the reprocessing issue: having expended millions of dollars in a lobbying campaign to get the infamous Hyde Act passed, India has now to brace up to two more battles on Capitol Hill — securing congressional approval first of the 123 agreement, and then of a special 131 agreement. That is likely to subject India to continuing congressional scrutiny and demands for a long time.

By deferring a resolution of the reprocessing issue to the future while flaunting a barren notional right at present, India also risks getting into a bigger mess than over Tarapur, whose spent fuel continues to accumulate 38 years after the twin-reactor power station began operating. The Tarapur mess has persisted even though the 1963 agreement granted India an operational consent to reprocess and provided for no congressional role. Yet Washington blocked India from reprocessing by exploiting an innocuous provision calling for a “joint determination” that the reprocessing facility would be adequately safeguarded. The US simply refused to join India in such a “joint determination” even after the IAEA had certified that very facility — PREFRE — to be “safeguardable.” Indeed, the IAEA has applied safeguards in the “campaign mode” to PREFRE since the 1980s, whenever India introduced safeguarded fuel there from another power station, RAPS.

In the new 123 accord, the US has gained an effective veto on Indian reprocessing until such indeterminate time India has satisfied it by building a new “state-of-the-art” facility and working out the subsequent “arrangements and procedures.” The last Indian reprocessing facility at Kalpakkam took five years to complete, but the new one is likely to take longer, given the external involvement in its design and the absence of an international “state-of-the-art” model. National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan has already warned that “spoilers” could nit-pick on its design to delay the process. “You will get spoilers I am quite sure … if someone is quibbling that ‘I don’t like it to be facing west, it should face east,’ I mean that would be different,” he said in an interview published on July 28, 2007.

Against this background, it is inexcusable that Indian negotiators have sought to pull the wool over the public’s eyes on key issues. Can allegiance to the deal be allowed to trump national interest?

Today the deal has become a political cudgel in a spreading storm. Yet there is a silver lining. The furore drives home an important message: Indian democracy has matured to the point that without winning public trust, no PM can move forward on a core national-interest issue.

(Concluded)

© Asian Age, 2007 

A Divisive Deal

India Today, August 27, 2007 

Rather than chase a misbegotten nuclear deal with the United States now, a rising India could easily get a better bargain if it were patient

GUEST COLUMN: Brahma Chellaney

Behind the political storm triggered by the civil nuclear deal with the US lies deep-seated national concern over its long-term implications for India’s security and strategic autonomy. The deal has divided India like no other strategic issue since independence. After all, the deal is not just about importing nuclear reactors for electricity. It will determine what kind of India emerges in the years to come — a major independent power with the requisite economic and military strength, or a middling power trimming its sails to the prevailing American winds and still relying on imports to meet basic defence needs.

            India stands out as the only large country still deeply dependent on arms imports, to the extent that it has emerged as the world’s largest weapons importer. The nuclear deterrent is the only strategic programme it has pursued somewhat successfully. While its nuclear posture calls for a “credible minimal deterrent”, the country still hasn’t developed a minimal, let alone credible, deterrent against its main challenge, China. Yet, New Delhi blithely put the nuclear programme on the negotiating table to reach a deal that implicitly imposes qualitative and quantitative restrictions on the Indian nuclear-weapons capability.

India has already paid a very heavy price internationally for its nuclear programme. And the deal seeks to exact a further price, in the name of freeing the country from some of the rigours of US export controls. America’s technology controls and sanctions approach were fashioned largely in response to India’s 1974 nuclear test. Today, the main target of that policy has come full circle doubly. First, India has agreed to become part and parcel of the US-led non-proliferation system just when that regime has begun to visibly corrode. India is to “unilaterally adhere” to cartels that still exclude it from their membership.

Second, in concluding a new accord under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, India has paid no heed to the lessons from an earlier “123 agreement”, signed in 1963. In the 1970s, America had cut off all fuel supply to the US-built Tarapur reactors by enacting a new domestic law that rewrote the terms of the 123 agreement. The new, iniquitous 123 agreement not only grants the US the right to suspend all supplies forthwith by merely issuing a termination notice, but also omits a standard clause now found in America’s 123 accords with other states — that neither party will “invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform” the agreement. India, gaining the right to be merely consulted but granting America the right to take all final decisions, has put itself at the latter’s mercy.

            Let us look at the benefits the deal offers. India principally would be able to import power reactors and fuel — and in the process help revive the US nuclear-energy industry. India, however, would continue to face stringent US export controls on advanced and dual-use technologies critical to rapid economic growth. Even for its civil nuclear facilities, India will not be able to buy enrichment, reprocessing and heavy-water components, however minor.

            Now look at the price. First, India is set to replicate in the energy sector the very mistake it has pursued on armaments by sinking into an imports dependency. India is today willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to import overly-expensive reactors when it can more profitably invest that money to commercially develop its own energy sources. Second, such imports will be a path to energy insecurity, since the reactor and fuel business is the world’s most politically regulated commerce.

            Third, the deal’s strategic costs are exorbitant. Like its conventional weaponry, India’s embryonic nuclear-arms capability will remain subcontinental in range. To ensure that, India has been slapped with a nuclear test ban through a US law, with the 123 accord granting no reprieve. The US President is now required to annually certify to Congress that “India is in full compliance” with a long list of congressionally-imposed “commitments and obligations”. India, for its part, has agreed to shut down by 2010 its newly-refurbished Cirus reactor, which produces a third of its weapons-grade plutonium.

Nothing better shows the patron-client ties the deal anoints than one simple fact: While the US has an unfettered right to withdraw from all its obligations, India’s obligations are legally irrevocable and never-ending. Even if cooperation is arbitrarily terminated by the US, India will still be stuck with everlasting international inspections on its entire civil nuclear programme. Little surprise thus that the deal has attracted increasing notoriety in India.

            New Delhi needs to realize time is on its side. As a rising power, India could easily get a better deal, if it were patient and waited a few more years. Its interests, in any case, demand a deal not just restricted to what commercially appeals to America — power reactors and fuel — but facilitating an end to the full range of US-inspired technology sanctions.

The writer is a strategic affairs expert 

Copyright: India Today, 2007