A Flawed Safeguards Accord

Brahma Chellaney, Asian Age, July 11, 2008 

It must have been doubly embarrassing for New Delhi that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency let the cat out of the bag even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had returned home from the G-8 summit. By revealing that “at the request of the Government of India” it had circulated the safeguards accord’s text to its board members and begun the process for an extraordinary board meeting, the IAEA belied New Delhi’s assurance to the nation not to approach the Agency before Dr. Singh had won a vote of confidence in Parliament.

Also, in helping to make the text public, the IAEA only mocked New Delhi’s claim that it cannot share the text even in confidence with “third parties”, like the Left, which had been propping up the governing coalition. In fact, after the text had appeared on various international websites since Wednesday night, New Delhi claimed credit on Thursday afternoon for “unveiling” it!

            Now we know why the accord was shrouded in such secrecy. A careful reading of its text raises several red flags:

■ Far from it being an India-specific agreement, the accord resembles IAEA agreements with non-nuclear-weapons states. With the exclusion of the first two pages that contain the preamble, the accord starting from Section I, “General Directions,” on Page 3 to the very end, is largely modelled on IAEA safeguards agreements with non-nuclear-weapons state. In fact, there is no direct reference in this accord to the existence of an Indian nuclear military programme or an acknowledgement of India’s special status — a nuclear-weapons state uniquely doing what no other nuclear power has done: putting its entire civilian nuclear programme under permanent, legally irrevocable international inspections.

All the accord contains is a oblique reference in the preamble in the following words: “Noting the relevance for this Agreement of the understandings between India and the United States of America expressed in the India-U.S. Joint Statement of 18 July 2005, in which India, inter alia, has stated its willingness: to identify and separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes in a phased manner”. In fact, the accord lays the ground for IAEA inspectors to enforce safeguards with the same stringency applicable to non-nuclear-weapons states.

■ It carries a cosmetic reference to “corrective measures” in the preamble, but gives India no actual right to take corrective measures. The earlier 123 agreement with the US, instead of granting India the right to take corrective measures in response to a fuel-supply disruption, merely recorded that New Delhi will seek such a right in the IAEA accord. But in the India-IAEA accord, no such right has been secured in definable terms. There is only one reference to “corrective measures” in the entire text of the India-IAEA accord, and that reference occurs in the preamble. That reference reads: “India may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies”. The use of the term “may” instead of “shall” shows there is no legal entitlement.

Moreover, far from “corrective measures” being defined, the accord explicitly forecloses that option by making it clear that, under no circumstance, will India be allowed to withdraw from its safeguards obligations, which are legally immutable.

■ Not only is there no guaranteed fuel supply, but the accord also discredits what Dr. Singh had pledged in Parliament — to link perpetual IAEA inspections to perpetual fuel supply. Put simply, India has willingly forfeited the right to enforce lifelong fuel supply for safeguarded reactors by agreeing to remain powerless in a Tarapur-style fuel cut-off situation.

Indeed, the only reference to fuel supply occurs in the preamble, in the form of a note by India. It reads: “An essential basis of India’s concurrence to accept Agency safeguards under an India-specific safeguards agreement (hereinafter referred to as “this Agreement”) is the conclusion of international cooperation arrangements creating the necessary conditions for India to obtain access to the international fuel market, including reliable, uninterrupted and continuous access to fuel supplies from companies in several nations, as well as support for an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors”. There is, however, no reference in the body of the text to “fuel supply” or to a “strategic reserve of nuclear fuel”.

The ornamental reference in the preamble was inserted to save face because its language makes explicit that India is not tying the IAEA to assured fuel supply but merely recording that the safeguards accord follows the “conclusion of international cooperation arrangements creating the necessary conditions for India to obtain access” to assured fuel supply and to receive support to build a strategic fuel supply. But the harsh truth is that no such international arrangements have thus far been concluded.

This attempt to pull the wool on public eyes flows from India’s failure to secure its rights in the 123 agreement, which confers enforceable powers only on the supplier-state. In fact, the Indian fuel supply-related claims about the 123 agreement have bordered on comedy: The US assurances in Article 5.6 are all prospective, not present-day, with the US “committed to seeking agreement from the U.S. Congress to amend its domestic laws” and “prepared to take” additional steps. 

■ The safeguards accord, like the 123 agreement, is consistent with the provisions of the Hyde Act. Section 104(b)(2) of the Hyde Act stipulates that the US Congress can consider ratifying the final deal only after, inter-alia, “India and the IAEA have concluded all legal steps required prior to signature by the parties of an agreement requiring the application of IAEA safeguards in perpetuity in accordance with IAEA standards, principles and practices (including IAEA Board of Governors Document GOV/1621 (1973)) to India’s civil nuclear facilities, materials, and programmes…”

The safeguards accord, as mandated by the Hyde Act, is firmly anchored in the GOV/1621 (1973) document. For example, the safeguards accord’s Clause 29 reads: “The termination of safeguards on items subject to this Agreement shall be implemented taking into account the provisions of GOV/1621 (20 August 1973).”

Although the text of the GOV/1621 document is not public, its stipulation is well-known — that facility-specific safeguards shall be “in perpetuity”, allowing for no suspension of international safeguards and shutting out room for corrective measures.

Clause 29, however, raises the question whether India, faced with a fuel cut-off, will have the right to withdraw from safeguards the eight indigenous power reactors it is opening to outside inspection. According to papers published by two legal experts on GOV/1621, Antonio F. Perez and Laura Rockwood, the answer may be yes, if India first removes, to IAEA’s satisfaction, supplied fissionable material used or processed in those reactors.

■ India will not only open its entire civil programme to external safeguards, but also help pay for such inspections. India additionally has agreed to protect the Agency and its inspectors against “third-party liability, including any insurance or other financial security, in respect of a nuclear incident”, even though the IAEA is to vet the design of new facilities.

The accord lays out the cost of inspection of each Indian facility at 1.2 million euro annually. India is to place more than two dozen facilities under safeguards in a phased manner. Without making clear what will be New Delhi’s share, Clause 101 says: “India and the Agency shall each bear any expense incurred in the implementation of their responsibilities under this agreement”. But with the Hyde Act mandating “fallback US safeguards” in case “budget or personnel strains in the IAEA” render it “unable” to fully enforce inspections, India may be compelled to pick up most of the IAEA expenses to avoid parallel US inspections.

            The costs of IAEA inspections will be high because, under the accord, India has agreed to be subject to rigorous safeguards, not the token inspections the Agency carries out in nuclear-weapons states.

India indeed has granted the IAEA the right to carry out “special inspections” at will. While civil nuclear research institutions bereft of atomic material will escape inspection, commercial power reactors, reprocessing and other facilities with an annual throughput of more than 60 kilograms of nuclear material are to be subject to “continuous inspection”, with the IAEA having the right of access at all times. The Agency, however, has agreed to implement the accord in a manner not to hamper “India’s economic or technological development, and not to hinder or otherwise interfere with any activities involving the use by India of nuclear material, non-nuclear material, equipment, components, information or technology produced, acquired or developed by India independent of this agreement for its own purposes”.

            Contrast the accord’s provisions with Dr. Singh’s solemn assurances to Parliament on several occasions. For example, speaking in Parliament on March 7, 2006, the PM had given the following assurance: “In essence, an India-specific safeguards would … permit India to take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies. Taking this into account, India will place its civilian nuclear facilities under India-specific safeguards in perpetuity and negotiate an appropriate safeguards agreement to this end with the IAEA”.

            The deal has progressively picked up such tougher conditions that today few remember that the July 18, 2005, agreement-in-principle had promised India “the same benefits and advantages” as the US. What is on offer now is restricted cooperation tied to intrusive conditions, to the extent that the G-8, in its chair’s summary this week, put the focus on advancing “India’s non-proliferation commitments and progress so as to facilitate a more robust approach to civil nuclear cooperation…” The deal is the means to tether India to the non-proliferation regime. 

            The India-IAEA safeguards accord compounds the mistakes Indian diplomacy made on the civil-military separation plan and the 123 agreement. Its operative parts mirror the clauses found in the IAEA agreements with non-nuclear-weapons states.

Too much hot air in nuke deal

The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is largely about selling dreams, but a major myth propagated is that greater nuclear-generated electricity will help reduce India’s oil-import dependency, writes Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times

July 4, 2008

The partisan rancour over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal has helped obscure facts, allowing shibboleths and fantasies to substitute for an informed debate on a critical issue. Several myths continue to be repeated untiringly. The biggest of them draws a meretricious link between nuclear energy and soaring oil prices to justify the proposed import of high-priced, foreign fuel-dependent power reactors.

            What does nuclear power have to do with the price or import requirements of any transportation fuel? Thanks to the oil price shocks in the 1970s and 1980s and the advent of new energy technologies, the share of global electricity produced from oil has shrunk from 25 per cent in 1973 to barely 4 per cent. The remaining oil-fired power plants — of which India has only a handful — will be phased out, or refitted to run on gas. Oil now is primarily used for transportation, while the reactor-import option is about electricity generation.

The link between nuclear power and oil is specious. In the years ahead, the world could move toward electric vehicles and even use grid power to make hydrogen for the fuel-cell vehicles of the future. In another futuristic scenario, nuclear energy may indirectly serve as a substitute to some oil use in the commercial and industrial sectors. But today, greater nuclear-generated electricity is not going to really reduce any country’s oil needs, certainly not India’s. In fact, with little overlap in the oil and nuclear global-market structures, nuclear power now competes principally against coal, natural gas and maybe renewables.

If global oil demand is threatening to outstrip supply, so is the case with uranium. Current concerns associated with oil’s price volatility, supply security and geopolitical risks are no different than uranium’s.  And if global oil reserves are finite, so are uranium resources, with proven uranium reserves likely to last barely 85 years, according to the Red Book published jointly by the OECD and IAEA. In fact, in the past five years, the international spot price of uranium has risen faster than that of crude oil, with uranium today trading six times above its $10 a pound historical average. Oil and uranium prices are likely to stay volatile, but the long-term trend for both is surely up.

Just as cheap oil now appears fanciful, cheap nuclear power for long has been a mirage. More than half a century after then U.S. Atomic Energy Agency Chairman Lewis Strauss claimed that nuclear energy would become “too cheap to meter”, the nuclear power industry everywhere subsists on generous state subsidies, which do not reflect in the published costs of generation. The current electricity-market liberalization trends spell trouble for the global nuclear-power industry because they threaten the state support on which it survives. As a 2005 IAEA study by Ferenc Toth and Hans-Holger Rogner warns, “nuclear power’s market share might indeed follow a downward trajectory” if state subsidies abate and more cost-effective reactors are not designed.

Other international studies have shown that nuclear power, although a long-matured technology, has demonstrated the slowest rate of learning in comparison to other energy technologies, including newer sources like wind and combined-cycle gas turbines. Instead of the price declining with nuclear power’s maturation, the opposite has happened. Power reactors also remain very capital-intensive, with high up-front capital costs, long lead times for construction and commissioning, and drawn-out amortization periods that discourage private investors. In the US, two separate studies by the University of Chicago (2004) and MIT (2003) showed new nuclear power remaining comparatively more expensive.

That explains why the U.S. industry has yet to receive its first domestic power reactor order in more than three decades, despite the Bush administration offering among the world’s most-attractive tax sops and other state incentives. But in India there has been little debate on the nuclear deal’s premise — that the way to meet burgeoning energy demands is to import power reactors. While nuclear power certainly deserves a place in a diversified energy portfolio, reactors imports will be a path to external-fuel dependency and exorbitant plant costs.

India ought not to confuse its electrical generation problem with transportation fuel problem. Also, India cannot correct its oil-import dependency on the Gulf region by fashioning a new dependency on a tiny nuclear-supply cartel made up of a few state-guided firms. While oil is freely purchasable on world markets, the global nuclear reactor and fuel business is the most monopolized and politically regulated commerce in the world, with no sanctity of contract. Without having loosened its bondage to oil exporters, should India get yoked to the nuclear cartel?
 

With few reactors being built in the West or Russia, this cartel has aggressively sought export markets. In a bizarre spectacle, after having castigated Iran’s pursuit of civil nuclear technology as unsuited to its energy wealth, France and the US have competed to sign up reactor deals with oil-rich Arab countries. Yet, even at the current slack rate of construction of reactors, bottlenecks are becoming a serious problem for key components. There are just a few manufacturers for many components. For example, at least nine reactor components, including giant pressure vessels and steam generators, are made only in one facility owned by Japan Steel Works. A recent study by the U.S.-based Keystone Center reported a six-year lead time for some parts.

The harsh truth is that reactor imports, far from cutting India’s oil imports, will increase the already-wide price differential between nuclear energy and thermal power. While all the Indian power reactors built since the 1990s have priced their electricity at between 270 and 285 paise per kilowatt hour or higher, despite inbuilt state subsidy, the coal-fired Sason plant project in central India has contracted to sell power at 119 paise per kWh. Of the three countries lobbying to sell power reactors to India, the United States has little record to show while France’s record stands blemished by a two-year time overrun and $2.1 billion cost escalation in building Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 plant. The third, Russia, is struggling to complete its already-delayed twin reactors in Kundakulam. Wishful thinking ought not to cloud India’s options.

(The author is professor, Centre for Policy Research)

© Economic Times, 2008.

Nuclear Deal: Questions That Baffle

Why is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a hurry to approach the IAEA Board when he knows the deal cannot be sealed during the Bush presidency? The best way to proceed is to do what he had promised — build a broad political consensus in favour.

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, June 27, 2008

The civil nuclear deal with America, although steeped in growing partisan rancour, is hardly the weighty issue that should determine any government’s future. Indeed, it is an issue of little long-term import to India’s great-power ambitions or energy needs. For the U.S., the deal offers substantive benefits. But for India the benefits are largely symbolic.

Yet the costs the still-uncertain deal is exacting on India can be gauged from the self-induced federal paralysis, with a sulking prime minister withdrawing into a shell and senior ministers deferring important work. The defence minister, for instance, called off a trip to Japan intended to add strategic content to a bilateral relationship pivotal to power equilibrium in Asia. Such government disruption from the top has no parallel in the annals of independent India.

The ungainly political stagecraft on display raises several unanswered questions. The first relates to Dr. Manmohan Singh’s obsession with a deal that has begun to warp his priorities. Many are asking the same question: Why is he willing to stake his government’s future on a single issue of questionable long-term strategic weight? Can he fashion a legacy by choosing deal-making over deterrent-building?

What is mystifying is that Dr. Singh has landed the country in a political logjam over a deal he knows cannot be completed during the remainder term of U.S. President George W. Bush. Time has simply run out. Even in an overly optimistic scenario, the deal cannot be ratified by the present U.S. Congress.

In addition to New Delhi’s insistence on taking its safeguards accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency to the latter’s governing board at this stage — an action that will gratuitously tie the country’s hands even before the final deal is clear — an extraordinary plenary meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group will need to be held to consider a rule-change by consensus. An NSG waiver will neither be easy nor swift, with the U.S. itself seeking to attach conditions that mesh with its Hyde Act. In the last stage, the deal will come up for congressional ratification, but only after three documents — the so-called 123 agreement, a presidential determination that India has met all the stipulated preconditions, and a “Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement” — have been placed before the U.S. Congress “for a period of 60 days of continuous session”.

Given the limited number of days left in the present U.S. legislative calendar to let a ratification process run its full course, why this tearing hurry on the part of India to take the safeguards accord to the IAEA Board? Washington — whose almost-daily statements have sought to egg on New Delhi to play that very card, even if it led to the collapse of Dr. Singh’s government — acknowledged this week that, “obviously, the next U.S. government will have to look at this [deal] and make their own decisions on it”. In fact, as early as last month, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden had said the deal is unlikely to be approved in Bush’s term.

Before knowing how the NSG will condition cooperation with India or the attitude of the next U.S. administration, why is New Delhi willing to part with its last remaining card by taking the safeguards accord to the IAEA Board? That accord, at any rate, ought to be taken to the Board only after the contours of the Additional Protocol with the IAEA have been firmed up. Otherwise, a leverage-stripped India could face more-stringent and wider inspections when it returns for Additional Protocol negotiations.

Like the 123 agreement, India has already finalized and “frozen” the safeguards accord. But unlike the former, which was made public days after it was initialled, the latter text has not been shown even to coalition allies, underscoring the creeping official opacity.

There are other mysteries, too. One centres on Dr. Singh’s metamorphosis from being anti-nuclear to becoming a fervent votary of commercial nuclear power. As finance minister in the first half of the 1990s, Dr. Singh starved the nuclear programme of funds, disabling new projects and halting uranium exploration.

The uranium crunch India confronts today is rooted in the fact that the actions Dr. Singh set in motion then were not reversed until several years after he left office. That Dr. Singh’s newfound interest in nuclear power relates merely to reactor imports has been underscored by his recent action in cutting the Department of Atomic Energy’s 2008-09 budget by more than half a billion dollars.

Another unexplained action — one that demolishes the official contention that the deal has no bearing on the strategic programme — is the U.S.-dictated decision to permanently shut down Cirus, one of India’s two bomb-grade plutonium-production reactors. As Paul Nelson, T. V. K. Woddi and William S. Charlton of the Texas A&M University point out in a U.S. government-funded study, much of India’s cumulative historic production of weapons-grade plutonium has come from Cirus, operating since 1960.

As a completely refurbished reactor, Cirus is as Indian a facility as any. The prime minister’s baffling decision to shut down Cirus two years from now, without approving a replacement reactor, will leave a major production shortfall in military-grade plutonium.

No less troubling is the fact that solemn promises made in Parliament were not kept. After the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Foreign Relations Committee had approved separate versions of an India-specific bill, the prime minister declared on August 17, 2006: “I had taken up with President Bush our concerns regarding provisions in the two bills. It is clear if the final product is in its current form, India will have grave difficulties in accepting the bills. The U.S. has been left in no doubt as to our position”. When Congress disregarded Dr. Singh’s red lines and passed the Hyde Act by amalgamating the toughest elements from the Senate and House bills, the prime minister admitted on December 18, 2006, that “there are areas which continue to be a cause for concern”.

Yet India negotiated a 123 agreement that complies with the Hyde Act, with the U.S. stating publicly, “We have the Hyde Act, and we kept reminding the Indian side, and they were good enough to negotiate on this basis…” Of all the 123 agreements the U.S. currently has with partner-states, the one with India stands out for conferring enforceable rights only on the supplier-state.

The prime minister’s assurances on ““removal of restrictions on all aspects of cooperation”, lifetime fuel stockpiles, linking perpetual international inspections with perpetual fuel supply through “India’s right to take corrective measures”, securing an operational consent to reprocess spent fuel, etc. today lie in tatters.

The government’s secrecy on the safeguards accord springs from the fact that its text release will expose the manner it has yielded further ground. For example, the 123 agreement, instead of granting the right to take corrective measures, just records that India will seek such a right in the IAEA accord. But the IAEA accord, in its preamble, merely cites the 123 agreement’s reference to corrective measures!

It is manifest from this record that if the deal attracts more onerous conditions during the NSG and congressional approvals, the prime minister will go along, as he has in the past, after making some perfunctory noises. Indeed, it is this record that is likely to embolden NSG members and U.S. lawmakers to tag on more conditions in the next stages to constrain India’s nuclear leeway.

As it nears its third anniversary, the deal has become an emblem of how not to conduct Indian diplomacy. The deal also symbolizes the manner it has been sought to be thrust on the nation through media management, instead of by political co-option.

Public relations alone cannot sell an initiative. Can it be forgotten that the deal’s current cheerleaders were the drumbeaters to get India to send an army division into Iraq in 2003? How more vulnerable would India have been today had that campaign succeeded?

Just as in 2003, today’s campaign is centred on overstatement — that the concerned issue holds the key to a strategic partnership with America. There is also gross exaggeration about the utility of high-priced, foreign fuel-dependent reactors from overseas.

The deal’s collapse will neither alter the direction of the U.S.-Indian relationship, which is set toward closer strategic cooperation, nor affect the modest role nuclear power will play in India’s energy mix, with or without reactor imports. The deal, contrary to the propaganda, does not offer India unfettered access to uranium imports. India’s uranium crunch, in any event, is set to ease in two years’ time as new mines and mills open, according to nuclear chief Anil Kakodkar.

In that light, how justifiable is Dr. Singh’s action in turning the conditions-laden deal into a make-or-break issue of personal prestige and upping the ante to the extent that the nation has been plunged into a political crisis? Instead of wanting to precipitously approach the IAEA Board and step into a firestorm of national furore, shouldn’t the prime minister seek to achieve what he pledged in Parliament — “the broadest possible consensus within the country to enable the next steps to be taken”?

Once the IAEA Board seals the safeguards accord, India will have little role to play in the next stages, other than as a bystander anxiously monitoring from afar what additional conditions the deal attracts in the NSG and congressional-ratification processes. So why throw nuclear caution to the winds and buoy up non-proliferation literalists in the NSG and Congress in their resolve to sculpt the final deal?

© Asian Age, 2008.

Put The Ball In Their Court

To help build bipartisan Indian support, let the US present a final deal

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, June 19, 2008

The blame game on the nuclear deal has begun in earnest. “It is now an Indian problem”, says Henry Kissinger. “India needs to make some tough choices”, chips in US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. Instead of putting the onus on India, why doesn’t the US do its part and present New Delhi a final deal it cannot rebuff? After all, the deal has yet to be ratified by the US Congress or considered by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, a cartel the US helped establish in response to India’s 1974 test.

Before India plays its last card, shouldn’t America secure an NSG rule-change and congressional ratification? That card involves taking the safeguards accord to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board for approval. That is a small step, given that the text of the accord has already been finalized and “frozen”. The Americans can now easily take this text to the NSG and their Congress for the necessary approvals so that New Delhi knows the final terms of the deal before it forfeits that last card. Given the distinct possibility of the deal attracting more grating conditions as it traverses the next stages, shouldn’t India know the deal’s closing terms before it approaches the IAEA board? Can India tie its hands before the final deal is clear?

            Even a quick look at the original July 18, 2005, agreement-in-principle will show that India’s obligations were merely reciprocal to America’s actions. That accord first lays out America’s obligations, with the President committed to seek “agreement from Congress to adjust U.S. laws and policies, and … work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India”. It then defines India’s part as occurring in return: “The Prime Minister conveyed that for his part, India would reciprocally agree that it would be ready to assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the US”. 

            Along the way, however, the sequence was reversed, to India’s disadvantage. The original terms also got changed. Today, there is not even the pretence that the deal offers “full civil nuclear energy cooperation”, or that India is set to “acquire the same benefits and advantages” as the US. What is on offer is restricted cooperation tied to conditions that require India, among others, to brook a permanent test ban; to grant an open-ended right to the US to suspend fuel supplies forthwith simply by issuing a one-year termination notice; to forego reprocessing of spent fuel until it has, in the indeterminate future, won a separate, congressionally vetted agreement; and to agree to route not just spent fuel of US-origin but all “foreign nuclear material” through a costly new dedicated reprocessing facility, for which no components are to be allowed to be imported because of a wider continual ban.

           The Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) initiative was designed to help ease US technology controls against India in three separate areas — high technology, civilian space and commercial nuclear power. These three areas became known as the “trinity”. Yet, instead of a broad deal covering all the “trinity” issues, the US offered a deal in just one area where its commercial interests were dominant — the revival of its moribund nuclear-power industry. An enduring strategic partnership with the US will clearly aid Indian interests. But can such a partnership emerge without the US delivering on the other “trinity” areas — high-technology and civilian space cooperation?

While the nuclear deal has required complex actions — a change in US law, a so-called 123 agreement and a proposed NSG waiver — the opening of civilian space and high-technology cooperation with India merely demanded US executive action. By elastically interpreting existing US law and applying to India the same standards it does to another non-NPT state, Israel, Washington could have opened the doors to civilian space and high-technology cooperation. Instead, the US Congress has audaciously cross-linked civil nuclear cooperation to the continuance of US export controls against New Delhi in another “trinity” area, with the Hyde Act stipulating that US missile sanctions law (which prohibits dual-use space exports) will still apply to India even after it “unilaterally adheres” to the US-led Missile Technology Control Regime as part of the current deal.

That the deal could be subject to even more conditions is a real concern. First, the US has declined to share with India its revised “pre-decisional” proposal to the NSG. Its first proposal, submitted before the Hyde Act’s passage, sought to make the test ban on India a multilateral reality. Its latest proposal is said to add new conditions that mesh with the Hyde Act’s constraints. Second, congressional ratification could follow the 1985 example, when the attachment of three extraneous conditions held up the US-China nuclear deal for 13 years. The Hyde Act indeed states that it will be open to Congress to “pass a joint resolution of approval with conditions” by giving up “the expedited procedures” that permit a simple up-or-down vote.

Before seeking to force India’s hand, the US ought to present a final deal. A deal that comes with “clean” NSG and congressional approvals and with transparent, just terms will win bipartisan Indian support. The ball should now be in America’s court because India has already delivered on issues ranging from a civil-military separation plan to a safeguards accord.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

© Times of India, 2008.

Obama’s India-Nuclear Legacy

Whether Obama becomes U.S. president or not, his two 2006 congressional amendments have helped constrain India’s fuel access and room for manoeuvre under the nuclear deal, now in abeyance.

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, June 18, 2008

Barack Obama’s epochal political breakthrough in becoming the first black presidential candidate in history of either of the two main U.S. political parties is a tribute to his stump skills and the popular hopes he inspires. In contrast to his aging opponent John McCain, whose conservatism is anchored in the past, the 46-year-old Obama is the candidate for change, offering a distinctly different vision centred on charting a better future.

            That is Obama’s real strength. In the Democratic Party primary contest against Hillary Clinton, Obama’s victory underscored a couple of political axioms: Sunny beats sullen, and buoyancy defeats whining.

            A first-term U.S. Senator, Obama has come up rapidly. But even as a rookie Senator, Obama left a distinct imprint in congressional deliberations. Take the vaunted U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. The deal, yet to pass several major steps, is currently in limbo. But if it ever takes effect, Obama’s contribution would have been no small in the constraints the U.S. Congress has imposed on civil nuclear cooperation with India.

            When the full Senate considered the deal, Obama criticized what he called the “blank cheque” offered to India through the official waiver legislation introduced by the Bush administration in March 2006. Obama’s intervention is recorded in Congressional Record of November 16, 2006:

“Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for the U.S.-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act. As I have said before, I believe strengthening the relationship between our two nations is an important strategic goal and this legislation helps us take a dramatic step in this direction.

“However, like many of my colleagues, I have concerns with potential non-proliferation consequences of this agreement. Much to my disappointment, the administration has done very little to address these concerns, instead, sending draft legislation to the Congress that was essentially a blank cheque.

“The managers of the bill, Senators Lugar and Biden, have done a tremendous job taking the administration’s proposal and shaping it into meaningful, bipartisan legislation. The bill now before the Senate helps move us closer to India while addressing some key non-proliferation issues.

“However, I remain concerned about the issue of nuclear testing. A decision by the Indian government to conduct such a test could trigger an arms race in South Asia that would be extremely dangerous and destabilizing.

“The good news is that the joint statement between President Bush and Prime Minister Singh of July 18, 2005, declared that India’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing will continue. I take Prime Minister Singh at his word, but also believe in following President Reagan’s mantra of ‘trust but verify’.”

 Obama was not content that the official bill actually attached a legally binding rider to the deal tantamount to dragging India through the backdoor into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) — a pact the Senate had itself rejected in 1999. While the CTBT grants its parties the right to withdraw by invoking supreme national interest, the official bill put India under a permanent test ban by mandating re-imposition of civil nuclear sanctions in the event of a test — an American action that would leave India’s safeguarded power reactors high and dry in a deal-driven paradigm.

            To help further toughen the legislation, Obama introduced two amendments that profoundly reshaped the terms on which India is now being offered the deal.

            1. The first amendment was an innovative insertion that imposed fetters on uranium-poor India’s access to fuel, restricting such imports to “reasonable reactor operating requirements.” Obama’s amendment not only undercut the stated raison d’être of the original deal — “full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India” — but also busted Dr. Manmohan Singh’s March 7, 2006, assurance to Parliament that New Delhi would secure the right to build lifetime fuel stocks to guard against supply disruption. Furthermore, it shattered the claim in India’s Separation Plan that, “The U.S. will support an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors.” 

            Obama’s Senate Amendment 5169, passed by a voice vote, stated: “It is the policy of the United States that any nuclear power reactor fuel reserve provided to the Government of India for use in safeguarded civilian nuclear facilities should be commensurate with reasonable reactor operating requirements.” The House of Representatives had proposed no such restriction. Obama’s amendment, which became Section 114 of the Senate bill, found its way into the final legislation as Section 103 (b) (10) of the Hyde Act.

            The amendment’s avowed purpose was to “clarify U.S. policy in order to deter nuclear testing.” That meshed with what Obama stated on the Senate floor. Consider the following exchange in the Senate:

Obama: On a related note, is it the chairman’s interpretation of the legislation that, in the event of a future nuclear test by the Government of India, nuclear power reactor fuel and equipment sales, and nuclear technology cooperation would terminate; other elements of the U.S. -India nuclear agreement would likely terminate; and the U.S. would have the right to demand the return of nuclear supplies?

Lugar: Yes, under our bill, the only requirement which is waived is that in Section 123.a(2) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 — for full-scope safeguards. India’s 123 Agreement would still have to meet the requirement of Section 123.a(4), which requires that in the event of a test by India of a nuclear-explosive device, the U.S. shall have the right to request the return of supplies as you have stipulated.

Obama: I offered an amendment that the managers have already accepted pertaining to the supply of nuclear power reactor fuel in safeguarded civilian nuclear facilities. To further clarify this issue, is it the managers’ understanding that provision of fuel to the Government of India should be sized in a way to maintain a deterrent to Indian nuclear testing, while also providing protections against short-term fluctuations in the supply of nuclear fuel? In other words, is it your understanding that providing a fuel reserve to India is not intended to facilitate resumption in nuclear testing?

Lugar: Yes, that is our understanding.

Obama: Does the chairman believe that, as this agreement moves forward to the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), the U.S. should work to ensure that other nations provide nuclear power reactor fuel in a similar fashion?

Lugar: Yes, I hope that would be the case.

The “deterrent against Indian testing” Obama sought by keeping India on a tight fuel-access leash is a goal enthusiastically embraced by the full Congress in passing the Hyde Act. According to the Act’s accompanying explanatory statement, the fuel reserve provided to New Delhi should not be “of a size that would enable India to break its commitments, or end its moratorium on nuclear testing, and [still] maintain its civil nuclear energy production despite unilateral or international sanctions.” It also records that U.S. officials, contradicting Dr. Singh’s lifetime-fuel claim in Parliament, had testified that America “does not intend to help India build a stockpile of nuclear fuel for the purpose of riding out any sanctions that might be imposed in response to Indian actions such as conducting another nuclear test.”

Without defining what constitutes a “reasonable” fuel requirement, the Act circumscribes India’s fuel access to “some fresh fuel stored, so as to minimize down time when reactor cores are removed.” In other words, the stockpiling of fuel may be permitted to cover only the next refuelling — a far cry from the lifetime stocks Dr. Singh had pledged.

To further crimp India’s fuel access, the Obama-authored stipulation allowing imports for only reasonable operating needs is coupled with the requirements of Hyde Act’s Section 104 (g) (2) (H) and Section 104 (g) (2) (J) that the President annually estimate the amount of uranium mined in India during the previous year and let Congress know whether the imported uranium had affected India’s rate of production of unsafeguarded fissile material.

Obama’s desire that any exemption for India from the rules of the 45-nation NSG similarly restrict Indian access to foreign fuel will be easy to realize, given that Washington has considerable leverage over the handful of international firms that monopolize the global reactor fuel business. To help maintain a tab on India’s nuclear activities, the Senate bill’s Section 108 (a) stipulated that Congress be kept fully informed on India’s: (i) material non-compliance with any obligation; (ii) new nuclear facility construction; (iii) fissile-material production; and (iv) changes in the operational status of nuclear installations. That provision became the Hyde Act’s Section 104 (g) (1)).

            2. Obama helped insert another amendment to ensure that America did not facilitate civil nuclear exports to India by other states, if U.S. exports to New Delhi were terminated under American law. This effectively nullified Dr. Singh’s commitment to Parliament that if fuel shipments were suspended, “the U.S. and India would jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries … to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supply to India.”

Obama’s amendment became Section 102 (6) in the Senate bill and was incorporated in the Hyde Act as Section 102 (13). Ominously, mirroring Obama’s criterion on “short-term fluctuations”, Congress has recorded that any “assurance of supply arrangements that the U.S. is party to will be concerned only with disruption of supply of fuel due to market failures or similar reasons, and not due to Indian actions that are inconsistent with the July 18, 2005, commitments, such as a nuclear-explosive test.”

To ensure that no firm in another NSG country exported to India on less-stringent terms, the Hyde Act’s Section 104 (g) (2) (C) is identical to the Senate bill’s Section 108 (b) (3) in mandating that the President’s cyclic “Implementation and Compliance Report” to Congress provide a description of any significant commerce between India and other countries that either was inconsistent with NSG guidelines or would not meet standards applicable to U.S.-origin material. The intent behind this provision is to use the threat of sanctions to block a proposed export by, say, a French or Russian firm on less-rigorous terms.

The point here is that Obama’s call for an effective “deterrent” against Indian testing is fully reflected in the final legislation, which aims to ensure that India would have little room for manoeuvre if the U.S. suspended or terminated cooperation. Also, as he desired, the legislation covers U.S. policy and actions in the NSG. It is thus no surprise that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Congress barely four months ago that any NSG exemption for India will be “completely consistent with the obligations of the Hyde Act.”

Yet, despite this background and his broken promises to Parliament, Dr. Singh, with remarkable insouciance, still pitches for the deal, only to be held back by wiser counsel from Sonia Gandhi. And although a permanent test ban is built into the deal, a despairing Dr. Singh last week chose an unusual setting — a lengthy, prepared speech to less than a dozen service probationers — to make a curious policy pronouncement: “if the CTBT came into being, we will not sign it.” That inexplicably reversed India’s stance that it won’t come in the way of the CTBT’s entry into force.

Whether Obama becomes President or not, his legacy helps constrict India’s access and options under the deal. Indeed, that legacy exposes the myths still driving residual Indian interest in the deal, which Dr. Singh grudgingly acknowledged for the first time “has run into some difficulties.” These myths include the following:

■ the deal offers a magic-carpet ride to resolve India’s self-made uranium crunch by opening the path to unfettered access to foreign fuel;

■ unlike the conditions-laden U.S. waiver, the NSG will grant India a relatively “clean” exemption;

■ once the deal with the U.S. takes effect, New Delhi would gain access to civil nuclear items and materials from France and Russia on more-favourable political terms.

■ soaring oil prices justify greater emphasis on nuclear power.

There is little link between oil and nuclear energy, because oil is primarily used for transportation and the nuclear choice is for electricity generation.

Indeed, such myths show that if the now-stuck deal traverses to the next stages, India will be in for more nasty surprises.

But it is already clear that this deal cannot become a reality while George W. Bush is still President. Time has run out.

For example, to win congressional ratification, the cooperation agreement has to be submitted to Congress — along with a detailed presidential determination on India’s compliance with various preconditions — “for a period of 60 days of continuous session” before a joint resolution for approval can be taken up for consideration by the two legislative chambers. And despite the provision for a simple up-or-down vote — a practice that does not permit any amendment — the Hyde Act states that it will open to Congress to “pass a joint resolution of approval with conditions” by giving up the available “expedited procedures.”

The blunt fact is that it will be an Obama or McCain administration — and a new government in New Delhi — that will have the final say on the deal. The cheerleaders of the deal who have been shouting themselves hoarse thus need to hold their fire.

An Obama triumph — good for America and good for the world — will help add momentum to the U.S.-India relationship by freeing it of the albatross that the deal now represents.

© Asian Age, 2008

Strategic Imperative/Brahma Chellaney

Hush-Hush is Bush Word on Nuclear Deal

Brahma Chellaney

Covert  magazine, June 1-15, 2008

The more the Indo-US deal has progressed, the more the conditions it has attracted and the greater the consequent imperative to keep key elements under wraps. Nearly three years after it was unveiled as a “historic” breakthrough in US-Indian relations, the deal’s future remains uncertain. Even if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were to rupture his party’s relationship with the Left by taking the deal to the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, can he ensure that the deal will take effect without attracting more odious conditions at the subsequent stages involving the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and the US Congress? The deal has already divided India. And the possibility that the deal will get the final clearances without the attachment of further grating conditions seems remote. A showdown with the Left will break the present government without guaranteeing a final deal on largely palatable terms.

In any event, a deal of such strategic import that will lock India in perpetual, legally irrevocable commitments with the IAEA and arm the US with leverage ought not to be turned into a partisan issue domestically. Just as the Bush administration ensured congressional passage of the Hyde Act with bipartisan support, even if it meant loading the legislation with conditions unrelated to civil nuclear cooperation, Dr. Singh needs to build what he had promised long ago — a broad national consensus in support of the deal. To press ahead without such consensus would be a betrayal of national trust. In fact, that act would be doubly ironical: not only has the Indian Parliament been shut out from closely scrutinizing the deal, the US Congress will get a second chance to examine the deal when it comes in its final form, with the approval contingent on bipartisan support.

In that light, the Bush administration’s latest gag order on its written responses to congressional questions is an attempt to keep the Indian public in the dark on the deal’s larger and long-term implications. With New Delhi revealing little from the beginning, the Indian public had depended on US disclosures to understand the meaning of the various twists and turns in a continuing saga. But in recent months, new information has been hard to come by, with US officials becoming tight-lipped and the administration asking Congress to keep under wraps information that ought to be in the public domain.

Why all this secrecy about information the executive branch has shared with the legislature? Even though the deal is between the world’s largest and most-powerful democracies, hush-hush is the word on both sides. Take New Delhi’s own posture. It has refused to explain to Parliament and the public why it has willingly accepted an array of conditions under the bilateral 123 Agreement — conditions that range from India’s grant of an open-ended right to the supplier to suspend supplies forthwith simply by issuing a one-year termination notice, to the absence of any dispute-settlement mechanism such as an international arbitral tribunal that finds mention in the Japan-US 123 Agreement.

Even the men roped in by the government have not been very forthcoming on why they now support the deal. Take A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Brajesh Mishra. Mishra has gone from being a critic to a proponent without explaining his volte face. All he says is that he was officially briefed and now “hopes” and “believes” the deal is no longer detrimental to Indian interests. But why doesn’t he share with the public any new facts or information he has received? Kalam’s coming out in support of the deal raises even more troubling questions. In 1999, as defence adviser, he came out publicly in support of India’s signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Now he lends support to a deal that drags India through the backdoor into the CTBT. He has declared, “If at any time there was a fear that national security would be compromised … we can at any time withdraw (from the deal)”. That suggests he hasn’t studied the deal: the 123 Agreement, for instance, makes explicitly clear that once it enters into force, India cannot free itself of its obligation to maintain international inspections in perpetuity on its entire civil nuclear programme.

Can pompous personal opinions help sideline or suppress hard facts? Given that India still does not have minimum deterrence against China, how justifiable is New Delhi’s focus on deal-making rather than on deterrent-building? And will playing hush-hush rescue a misbegotten deal?

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

© Covert

The truth Talbott hides

Brahma Chellaney

The Asian Age, March 15, 2008

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What 14 rounds of hush-hush negotiations during the Clinton years could not clinch, the Bush administration is seeking to pull off through aggressive public diplomacy, centred on marketing the nuclear deal as India’s “passport” to the world.

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The Prime Minister has done well to assure Parliament that he will continue to "seek the broadest possible consensus within the country" over the nuclear deal with the United States. A critical matter like this, which is going to affect the future of India’s nuclear programme and tie the country to perpetual, legally irrevocable international inspections, demands such a consensus. The partisan rancour over what has become an increasingly divisive issue needs to be defused.

While giving that assurance, the Prime Minister referred to a recent claim by former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott that, had the Clinton team offered only "half" of what the Bush administration has proposed now, the Vajpayee government "would have gone for it." The truth is that Talbott says just the opposite in his detailed exposition in Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb, a book he published in 2004.

Talbott has a long record of mounting non-proliferation pressure on India. Before becoming deputy secretary, Talbott travelled to Moscow, as ambassador-at-large, to persuade the Russians to renege on their $75-million contract to sell cryogenic-engine technology to India — dangling carrots and warning that "a viable Indian missile capability could one day pose a security threat to Russia itself." It didn’t matter that cryogenic technology has civilian space applications and no nation has employed it in ballistic missiles.

To Talbott, India had to be penalised for retaining its nuclear-weapons option. Yet when India gatecrashed the nuclear club in May 1998, Talbott took the lead — after the shock over the tests had dissipated — to help shift the US policy goal. In place of the lost aim to stop New Delhi from crossing the threshold, a new objective was devised: Prevent India’s emergence as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state by bringing it into the US-led non-proliferation regime.

With that purpose in mind, Talbott, as the Clinton administration’s troubleshooter, held extended, closed-door negotiations with then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh during 1998-2000. The discussions that stretched to 14 rounds at ten locations in seven countries have been described by the recently-retired US undersecretary, R. Nicholas Burns, in an article published in the November-December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, as "Washington’s first truly sustained strategic engagement with the Indian leadership."

That "sustained strategic engagement" was essentially about getting India to accept a set of rigorous non-proliferation benchmarks, by Talbott’s own admission. But where the Clinton administration failed, the Bush team is on the scent of success. The impulse to stitch up the deal before it unravels under wiser Indian reflection has triggered a crescendo of calls by US officials: "The clock is ticking;" "the timelines are short;" "we are kind of playing in overtime;" "there’s still a lot of work but not a lot of time;" "India must move ahead;" and it’s "now or never."

Let’s compare the benchmarks the Clinton team tried to impose with the non-proliferation conditions the Bush administration has attached to the deal.

Talbott says in his book, "If there is a deal to be done with India, my guess is that it will be a version of the one offered by the Clinton administration and rejected by the BJP-led government. The four US-proposed non-proliferation benchmarks put forward in 1998 — joining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, making progress on a fissile material treaty, exercising strategic restraint (by that or some other name), and meeting the highest standard of export controls … should remain the basis of the American policy into the future. That means the US government should persist until the four areas of restraint become the basis of the Indian policy."

Here is Talbott admitting the Vajpayee government rejected the deal that was on offer then and saying the four Clinton-set benchmarks should remain the basis of US policy "into the future" — until India has caved in. In the book, Talbott presents himself as an unapologetic champion of hawkish positions — from mocking New Delhi for wanting to be grandfathered out of the NPT restrictions, to insisting the US cannot give India "a free pass into the nuclear club."

He lampoons Indian leaders he met. "Vajpayee’s pauses seemed to last forever … I had never met a politician so laconic." Prime Minister Inder Gujral’s 1997 meeting with President Clinton was a washout "in part because Gujral spoke so softly that everyone on the US side had trouble hearing what he was saying." Defence minister George Fernandes "regaled us with the story" of how he had been strip-searched in the US. "He seemed to enjoy our stupefaction at this tale." Sonia Gandhi went from being "diffident and evasive" to being "steely."

If Talbott has kind words for anyone, it is Jaswant Singh, whom he describes as the "persistent and beleaguered champion of moderation." He indeed flatters and pumps up Jaswant Singh, "the Indian statesman," saying it was "Jaswant" (as he calls him) who promised India’s signature on the CTBT. Talbott candidly admits the US game-plan was "to get the Indians to accept the CTBT along with meaningful restraints on their nuclear and missile programmes in exchange for our easing sanctions and throttling back on the campaign of international criticism we were orchestrating."

Domestic opposition in India, however, put paid to Jaswant Singh’s CTBT pledge. Not only that, the American side ended up empty-handed on the other restraint measures despite the protracted, 14-round talks. Talbott, whose approach in the negotiations was to smooth-talk the other side into submission, rues that Jaswant Singh "lost out" to the "conservatives within the BJP."

Now let’s see where the four Clinton-prescribed benchmarks stand today. What sticks out is that the Clinton benchmarks have not only been embraced wholeheartedly by the Bush administration, but also deftly incorporated in the deal, with each benchmark finding unequivocal mention in one or more of the key documents — the July 18, 2005 joint statement, India’s Separation Plan, the Hyde Act and the so-called 123 Agreement.

Benchmark 1 — a permanent test ban. That benchmark is central to the Bush deal with India. The expansive Hyde Act drags India through the backdoor into the CTBT. The Act admits it goes "beyond Section 129 of the Atomic Energy Act" in mandating that the waiver for India will necessarily terminate with any Indian test. The test ban is also built into the 123 Agreement by granting the US the dual right to seek the return of exported goods and to suspend all cooperation forthwith. In fact, with the Hyde Act going beyond the CTBT to define in technical terms what constitutes a nuclear-explosive test, India is to be held to CTBT-plus obligations.

What Jaswant Singh could not deliver has been ceded by a government whose real centre of power, Sonia Gandhi, paradoxically, was instrumental in scuttling the Vajpayee-led effort to build a political consensus for CTBT signature. Vajpayee’s hopes collapsed the moment Sonia Gandhi spoke up at the consensus-building meeting he had called. She said, "Why hurry when the US Senate itself has rejected this treaty? Heavens will not fall if we wait."

Benchmark 2 — restraint on fissile-material production. The Bush deal imposes this check in eclectic ways — from getting India to shut down one of its two research reactors producing weapons-grade plutonium to securing New Delhi’s commitment to work "with the US for the conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty." The Hyde Act proviso for regular presidential reports on India’s "rate of production" of fissile material or on any changes in "unsafeguarded nuclear-fuel cycle activities" opens New Delhi to sustained pressure.

Much of India’s cumulative historic production of weapons-grade plutonium has come from the Cirus research reactor, to be dismantled by 2010 after having been refurbished at a cost of millions of dollars barely four years ago. Eight indigenous power reactors will also become unavailable for strategic-material needs.

Benchmark 3 — strategic restraint. The Bush deal seeks to hold India’s feet to the non-proliferation fire through the instrumentality of the Hyde Act and 123 Agreement. The controls built into the deal, as Senator Joseph Biden has admitted, will help "limit the size and sophistication of India’s nuclear-weapons programme."

While permitting conditional and partial civil nuclear cooperation, the Hyde Act, seeking to hobble the growth of Indian delivery capability, mandates the continued applicability of US missile sanctions law against India. The deal primarily is aimed at ensuring that India’s nuclear-deterrent capability remains rudimentary and regionally confined, thus helping promote security dependency on the US, including for missile defence and conventional weapons. Fostering security dependency is the key to winning and maintaining an ally.

Benchmark 4 — "meeting the highest standard of export controls." India has agreed under the deal to enact "comprehensive export-control legislation" and to unilaterally adhere to the rules of US-led cartels. While the original deal cited two such cartels, the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and Missile Technology Control Regime — both of which continue to exclude India from their membership — the Hyde Act has expanded the list to include more, including the controversial Proliferation Security Initiative.

So, as is clear, all the four Clinton benchmarks are at the heart of the Bush deal with India.

In fact, the Bush deal has far more to show. While the Clinton team could not persuade the sphinx-like Vajpayee to place under international inspection more than the two indigenous power reactors he was willing to offer under a potential deal, the Bush administration has won the Manmohan Singh government’s agreement to subject 35 nuclear facilities, including eight existing indigenous power reactors, to permanent external inspection. New Delhi will also shut down Cirus and remove the fuel core from Apsara, Asia’s first reactor.

The Bush team could extract such commitments from India by taking the tack Talbott suggested in his book that he wrote with "the cooperation of the department of state," which later — in his words again — "subjected the manuscript to a review to ensure that the contents would not compromise national security."

With the benefit of hindsight, Talbott had advised that the White House use the dual bait of UN Security Council permanent membership and a strategic partnership to "coax India into the non-proliferation mainstream." That is exactly what President Bush did.

Before offering the deal, Washington led India up the garden path on UNSC membership and massaged its ego with statements that it was both "ready to help India become an important power in the 21st century" and open to "a decisively broader strategic relationship." Since the deal was unveiled, a growing number of publicists have been pressed into service to market it as "India’s passport to the world."

As a result, what hush-hush negotiations with Jaswant Singh could not achieve, aggressive public diplomacy may pull off, with Burns singing the ditty that the deal is "wildly popular among millions of Indians who see it as a mark of US respect for India." That explains why an inveterate non-proliferation ayatollah like Talbott today is hawking the Bush deal, betting that India’s short public memory will help obscure the inconvenient truths.

(c) Asian Age, 2008

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