Crisis India-Pakistan:
Achtergrondinformatie, analyse en nieuws
uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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Inter Press Service, December 28, 2006

India's Nuclear Disarmament Gets Critical

by Praful Bidwai

In October 2006, eight years after India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold, the world witnessed yet another breakout, when North Korea exploded an atomic bomb and demanded that it be recognised as a nuclear weapons-state. Talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, in return for security guarantees and economic assistance, collapsed last week.
In 2006, the ongoing confrontation between the Western powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear programme got dangerously aggravated. The United Nations Security Council imposed harsh sanctions on Iran but these may prove counterproductive..
Tehran dismissed the sanctions as illegal and vowed to step up its "peaceful" uranium enrichment programme. It added one more cascade of 164 uranium enrichment centrifuges during the year and is preparing to install as many as 3,000 of these machines within the next four months. (Several thousands of centrifuges are needed to build a small nuclear arsenal.)
Developments in South Asia added to this negative momentum as India and the United States took further steps in negotiating and legislating the controversial nuclear cooperation deal that they inked one-and-a-half years ago. The deal will bring India into the ambit of normal civilian nuclear commerce although it is a nuclear weapons-state and has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Meanwhile, India and Pakistan continued to test nuclear-capable missiles and sustained their long-standing mutual rivalry despite their continuing peace dialogue.
Looming large over these developments in different parts of Asia are the Great Powers, led by the U.S., whose geopolitical role as well as refusal to undertake disarmament has contributed to enhancing the global nuclear danger in 2006.
According to a just-released preliminary count by the Federation of American Scientists, eight countries launched more than 26 ballistic missiles of 23 types in 24 different events in 2006. They include the U.S., Russia, France and China, besides India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.
"One can list other negative contributing factors too," says Sukla Sen, a Mumbai-based activist of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, an umbrella of more than 250 Indian organisations. "These include U.S. plans to find new uses for nuclear armaments and develop ballistic missile defence ("Star Wars") weapons, Britain's announcement that it will modernise its "Trident" nuclear force, Japan's moves towards militarisation, and a revival of interest in nuclear technology in many countries."
"Clearly," adds Sen, "61 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has learnt little and achieved even less so far as abolishing the nucleus scourge goes. The nuclear sword still hangs over the globe. 2006 has made the world an even more dangerous place. The time has come to advance the hands of the Doomsday Clock."
The Doomsday Clock, created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published from Chicago in the U.S., currently stands at seven minutes to midnight, the Final Hour. Since 1947, its minute hand has been repeatedly moved "forward and back to reflect the global level of nuclear danger and the state of international security".
The Clock was last reset in 2002, after the U.S. announced it would reject several arms control agreements, and withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits the development of "Star Wars"-style weapons.
Before that, the Doomsday Clock was advanced in 1998, from 14 minutes to midnight, to just nine minutes before the hour. This was primarily in response to the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May that year.
The closest the Clock moved to midnight was in 1953, when the U.S. and the USSR both tested thermonuclear weapons. The Clock's minute hand was set just two minutes short of 12.
The lowest level of danger it ever showed was in 1991, following the end of the Cold War and the signature of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Clock then stood at 17 minutes to midnight.
"The strongest reason to move the minute hand forward today is the inflamed situation in the Middle East," argues M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs analyst currently with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore.
"Iran isn't the real or sole cause of worry. It's probably still some years away from enriching enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb. But there is this grave crisis in Iraq, which has spun out of Washington's control. And then there is Israel, which is a de facto nuclear weapons-state and is seen as a belligerent power by its neighbours in the light of the grim crisis in Palestine. All the crises in the Middle East feed into one another and aggravate matters," adds Ramana.
At the other extreme of Asia, new security equations are emerging, partly driven by the North Korean nuclear programme.
"Today, this is a key factor not only in shaping relations between the two Koreas, but the more complex and important relationship between North Korea, China, Japan and the U.S.", holds Alka Acharya, of the Centre of East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University here.
Adds Acharya: "The U.S. has failed to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis diplomatically. North Korea's nuclear weapons programme will spur Japan and South Korea to add to their military capacities. There is a strong lobby in Japan which wants to rewrite the country's constitution and even develop a nuclear weapons capability. Recently, Japan commissioned a study to determine how long it would take to develop a nuclear deterrent."
Japan has stockpiled hundreds of tonnes of plutonium, ostensibly for use in fast-breeder reactors. But with the fast reactor programme faltering, the possibility of diversion of the plutonium to military uses cannot be ruled out. Similarly, South Korea is likely to come under pressure to develop its own deterrent capability.
"Driving these pursuits are not just nuclear calculations, but also geopolitical factors," says Prof. Achin Vanaik who teaches international relations and global politics at Delhi University. "The U.S. plays a critical role here because of its aggressive stance and its double standards. It cannot convincingly demand that other states practise nuclear abstinence or restraint while it will keep it own nuclear weapons for 'security'. Eventually, Washington's nuclear double standards will encourage other countries to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities too."
In particular, the joint planned development of ballistic missile defence weapons by the U.S. and Japan is likely to be seen by China as a threat to its security and impel Beijing to add to its nuclear arsenal.
Adds Vanaik: "The real danger is not confined to East Asia or West Asia alone. The overall worldwide impact of the double standards practised by the nuclear weapons-states, and especially offensive moves like the Proliferation Security Initiative proposed by the U.S. to intercept 'suspect' nuclear shipments on the high seas, will be to weaken the existing global nuclear order and encourage proliferation. The U.S.-India nuclear deal sets a horribly negative example of legitimising proliferation."
"A time could soon come when a weak state or non-state actor might consider attacking the U.S. mainland with mass-destruction weapons. The kind of hatreds that the U.S. is sowing in volatile parts of the world, including the Middle East, could well result in such a catastrophe,'' Vanaik said.
The year 2006 witnessed a considerable weakening of the norms of nuclear non-proliferation. Until 1974, the world had five declared nuclear weapon-states and one covert nuclear power (Israel). At the end of this year, it has nine nuclear weapons-states -- nine too many.
No less significant in the long run is the growing temptation among many states to develop civilian nuclear power. Earlier this month, a number of Arab leaders met in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and decided to start a joint nuclear energy development programme..
"Although this doesn't spell an immediate crisis, nuclear power development can in the long run provide the technological infrastructure for building nuclear weapons too," says Ramana. "The way out of the present nuclear predicament does not lie in non- or counter-proliferation through ever-stricter technology controls. The only solution is nuclear disarmament. The nuclear weapons-states must lead by example, by reducing and eventually dismantling these weapons of terror."

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The Australian, December 20, 2006

Bush puts signature on India nuke law

WITH goals of ending India's nuclear "isolation" and easing world oil demand, US President George W.Bush signed legislation yesterday that will enable American companies to assist in the expansion of Indian civilian nuclear power generation.
The agreement, representing a reversal of three decades of discord with India over its nuclear weaponry, opens significant new trade doors with the emerging Asian power.
But the deal courts controversy because it does not require inspection of India's nuclear weapons facilities and some fear it could encourage emerging nuclear powers to defy international oversight.
The Bush administration, by encouraging use of nuclear power by a nation whose appetite for electricity is expected to double in the next decade, hopes to ease pressure on world oil supplies and avert spiralling prices for the US and other leading nations. Yet sceptics question how rapidly India can expand its nuclear energy.
The legislation was handed to Mr Bush this month by a bipartisan alliance in Congress after intensive White House negotiations with India.
It is expected to recalibrate the balance of power among the fastest-growing economies of Asia even as the US attempts to support and channel the ambitions of two competing giants, India and China.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who secured the deal after months of shuttle negotiations with Indian leaders, said the measure would "represent a major sea change in the way the world works".
"There's a larger story here, and that is that the United States is making a strategic move to build a new relationship with India," he said.
The US was not attempting to curtail the power of China with this initiative, he said. But he admitted "this deal, and the emergence of this relationship, could change the strategic landscape in ... all of Asia to the benefit of the United States".
Yet critics saw another storyline in the deal - that the US was in effect rewarding a rogue nuclear power. India never joined the international treaty for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons that 180 nations have signed since 1970. It tested its first nuclear weapon in 1974 and tested again in 1998, prompting its neighbour Pakistan to test its own nuclear bomb.
Critics complain that, while the US tries to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, which are signatories to the treaty, it has given treaty flouter India a free pass.
"It's a mistake," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Centre said. "A lot of countries, Iran and North Korea included, have pointed to this thing and said: 'Well, I guess there is really no reason to feel constrained. We all should get similar treatment."'
Mr Sokolski said the US could have found other ways to cement new relations with India, and questioned India's ability to rapidly expand nuclear power.
The US had long penalised India, an erstwhile ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, for flouting a treaty that was supposed to limit nuclear weaponry to a few nations and require all others to submit their civilian nuclear power programs to inspection by international monitors.
The US-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Co-operation Act requires the White House to ensure that India is not passing technology to Iran.
It also requires India to submit 14 of its nuclear reactors, and all of the many new civilian reactors it hopes to build in coming years, to international inspection, but enables India to keep eight military reactors private and exempt from oversight.

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The Hindu, December 20, 2006

Options open on nuclear tests, says Pranab

`We will stick to the stand of voluntary moratorium'

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Reprocessing is going to be a key element in the 123 agreement
"This is a civil nuclear agreement and not an arms control measure."
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NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday asserted in the Rajya Sabha that India was sticking to its declared stand of voluntary moratorium, but it would keep its options open on conducting nuclear tests if the national interest and priority so required.
"We are sticking to our stand of voluntary moratorium but there is no treaty bound commitment. If national priority so requires, we may have to do a nuclear test. It will be left to the wisdom of the governmental authority of that day. We would not like to foreclose that option. We have exactly retained the commitment which you did but it is not treaty bound,'' he said.
Mr. Mukherjee was referring to the "voluntary moratorium" as laid down by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on September 24, 1998, nearly three months after the Pokhran-II test during the National Democratic Alliance regime.
Pointing to the BJP-led Opposition benches, Mr. Mukherjee said: "I am at a loss to understand how you could have conducted a nuclear test within two months of coming to power. Everything was ready; scientists had done all the work. But what prompted you to declare unilateral, voluntary moratorium?"

Fissile material

The Minister said the U.S. legislation on the nuclear deal could not put a bar on production of fissile material by India.
Responding to concerns expressed by members, he said the civilian nuclear cooperation would be implemented in a phased manner till 2014.
"In full civil nuclear cooperation, there is nothing that bars India from reprocessing the spent fuel. It is going to be a key element in the 123 agreement that will be negotiated with the U.S., and the U.S. administration has categorically stated that it stands by the July 18, 2005 joint statement and will honour the commitments agreed to in the March 2 separation plan. On the issue of tests, our national security and strategic interests will not be compromised,'' Mr. Mukherjee asserted during a six-hour long debate.
Rejecting the Opposition charge that the country's interests were being "mortgaged,'' he said clarifications would be sought from the U.S. on certain "extraneous and prescriptive'' provisions in the American law before reaching a separate agreement to operationalise the deal.

"No change in stand"

Countering the charge of BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi that the country was being reduced to a "client-state" of the U.S., Mr. Mukherjee said the Government was accountable to Parliament for its actions and it would not change its stand simply because the Congress-led UPA Government was occupying the ruling party benches.
Mr. Mukherjee said: "Please do not change the policy, when you change the side. Today we are sitting on this side [ruling coalition benches], till the other day you were sitting here. I wonder how many times I have been accused of mortgaging India's interests? It was in 1982 when as Finance Minister I signed the IMF funding agreement and in 1994 when as Commerce Minister I inked the agreement joining the WTO and at that time there were uproarious scenes in this House.

Supported Patents Bill

"When sitting in Opposition, we supported Patents Bill despite reservations within the party because it was for the good of the country. We have kept the country's interest uppermost before anything else." Mr. Mukherjee's remarks was greeted with thumping of desks by his party members.

No reason for fears

Allaying apprehensions of several members, including those from the Left, he said: "This is a civil nuclear agreement and not an arms control measure."
During his 45-minute reply in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Minister recalled that India had repeatedly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as it was discriminatory and nuclear weapons states would have the right to stockpiling.

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The Hindu, December 20, 2006

Bush seeks to allay India's concerns

Siddharth Varadarajan

President issues three caveats to construe policy statements as advisory

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Will not be bound by some of the law's provisions: Bush
India wants 123 pact to incorporate all U.S. commitments
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New Delhi: In an effort to allay official Indian concerns about several aspects of the nuclear cooperation legislation passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this month, President George W. Bush declared on Monday that he would not be bound by some of the law's provisions.
In a formal statement issued shortly after signing into law the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, Mr. Bush introduced three specific caveats based on the executive's constitutional prerogative to conduct foreign policy.

"Not foreign policy"

Noting that Section 103 of the Act "purports to establish U.S. policy with respect to various international affairs matters," he said his approval of the Act "does not constitute my adoption of the statements of policy as U.S. foreign policy." Among the clauses in this section that Indian officials found particularly objectionable were directions to limit the amount of nuclear fuel India could store, and to "seek to prevent the transfer" to India of nuclear material by other countries in the event that the U.S. cuts off supplies.
"Given the Constitution's commitment to the presidency of the authority to conduct the Nation's foreign affairs," Mr. Bush's statement notes, "the executive branch shall construe such policy statements as advisory."
The second caveat attempts to undo the presumption of denial of enrichment and reprocessing-related equipment to India, built into Section 104(d)(2) of the Act. India objected to this clause because it tended to rule out the resumption of "full" nuclear cooperation as promised by the July 2005 agreement.
In his statement, Mr. Bush noted that this restriction could give rise to a potential conflict between U.S. domestic law and Nuclear Suppliers' Group guidelines, and raise "a constitutional question." Thus, in order to avoid such an eventuality, "the executive branch shall construe Section 104(d)(2) as advisory."
Finally, Mr. Bush's statement said he would "construe provisions of the Act that mandate, regulate, or prohibit submission of information to the Congress, an international organisation, or the public" in a manner that would be consistent with his "constitutional authority to protect and control information that could impair foreign relations."
In this regard, he specifically mentioned Sections 104 and 109 of the Act, which deal, inter alia, with reports on whether India is in compliance with its obligations, as well as on the establishment of a "joint scientific cooperative nuclear non-proliferation programme," and which mandate close scrutiny of India's strategic programme.

Reporting requirements

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted last August that some of the annual reporting requirements, even if non-binding, introduced an element of uncertainty and should be done away with. Though the Hyde Act tempered these requirements somewhat, New Delhi was not fully satisfied with the outcome, and wanted the White House to clear the air on these.
Officials said though Mr. Bush's caveats allayed some of the major concerns India had about attempts to shift the goalposts of the July 2005 agreement, New Delhi's aim was to ensure that the bilateral "123 agreement" fully incorporates all U.S. commitments, including those implied by the latest statement. This is considered crucial since Presidential statements and clarifications can always be reversed depending on changed political circumstances.

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The Hindu, December 20, 2006

A positive development, says Shashi Tharoor

PALAKKAD: Shashi Tharoor, United Nations Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said the nuclear deal with the United States was "a very positive development for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons."
Talking to presspersons here on Tuesday, he said though the U.N. had no official stand on the agreement, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei had described it as a positive development for peace and use of nuclear technology for development.
The treaty would help the country adopt international standards in handling nuclear technology and ensure safety.
On the possibility of India getting a Security Council seat, he said this was not possible unless the U.N. Charter was amended. Such an amendment would have to be approved by two-thirds of the General Assembly members. As this was a long and difficult process, India should try to get entry through election.
On his continuation in his present assignment, Mr. Tharoor said it was for the new Secretary General to decide about his advisers.
"If there is an offer, then I will decide whether to accept it or not."

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Boston Globe, December 19, 2006

Nuke deal with U.S. criticized in India

by Matthew Rosenberg

NEW DELHI --A nuclear cooperation pact touted as the cornerstone of an emerging India-U.S. partnership faced renewed criticism Tuesday in New Delhi, underscoring how far the countries have to go as they try to overcome decades of mistrust.
One Indian lawmaker called the pact an American attempt to undermine India's cherished atomic weapons program. Another suggested Washington wanted to dictate New Delhi's foreign policy.
The criticism came a day after President Bush signed a law allowing Washington to ship nuclear fuel and technology to New Delhi. The law, which reverses 30 years of U.S. atomic policy, was a key step toward implementing the deal.
The pact is firmly supported by India's government and is unlikely to be rejected by New Delhi.
The rancor here illustrates the shared democratic values that are bringing India and the United States together -- and similar independent streaks, which could present the biggest obstacles to a closer partnership.
"When it comes to foreign policy, like America, the record says India has always pursued its own interests, acting unilaterally if necessary," said C. Uday Bhaskar, a senior analyst at the Institute for Defense Studies in New Delhi.
New Delhi's and Washington's foreign policy goals are often not in sync, as evidenced by a nonbinding clause in the new U.S. legislation directing the president to determine whether India is cooperating with American efforts to confront Iran about its nuclear program.
Many here are rankled by suggestions from Washington that New Delhi should support American policy, be it on longtime ally Iran or on China, with whom India is seeking closer ties.
"Our foreign policy must remain independent," said Basudeb Acharia of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which supports India's governing coalition. "If they don't agree to remove these conditions then we will have no choice but to put pressure on the government not to sign."
On the other side of the political spectrum, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist group, is criticizing the deal as an American plan to undermine India's nuclear weapons program.
Many Indians argue nuclear weapons are key to the country's international standing, and nearly everyone agrees they are a needed deterrent against neighboring archrival Pakistan, which has them as well.
"The objective of Washington's policy is to halt, roll back and eliminate" India's nuclear capability, BJP lawmaker Arun Shourie said Tuesday during debate in the upper house of India's Parliament.
In exchange for nuclear fuel and knowledge, India has agreed to place 14 civilian nuclear plants under international inspections. Eight military plants would remain off-limits.
The deal, if completed, would open the international nuclear market to India after it was closed by the country's long-standing refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. New Delhi wants to get the fuel and know-how it needs to build new reactors and overcome a chronic energy crunch, which analysts say could limit economic growth.
American critics say the plan could boost India's nuclear arsenal and spark a nuclear arms race with Pakistan.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday defended the deal as good for the country, and said any concerns New Delhi has would be dealt with during technical negotiations next year.
He didn't elaborate on India's concerns, but some of India's top nuclear scientists have voiced fears the deal could limit New Delhi's right to reprocess spent atomic fuel and employ other sensitive nuclear technologies.

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Inter Press Service, December 19, 2006

India Split Over US Nuke Deal

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Dec 19 (IPS) - While President George W. Bush has signed into law new legislation passed by Congress to enable the controversial U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal, the agreement has come under flak in India's Parliament and a massive confrontation has broken out between its supporters and opponents.
The supporters say the deal offers India the best chance to get its nuclear weapons status accepted and legitimised by the great powers even if it compromises India's sovereignty. According to them, the deal also holds the key to India's long-term energy security.
Most of the deal's critics claim that Washington has ”shifted the original goalposts” agreed in July last year and imposed conditions on India calculated to cap its nuclear arsenal and limit India's freedom to pursue nuclear power generation the way it likes.
Neither side is particularly worried at the likely consequences of the deal in encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons or further weakening the already-fragile global nuclear order.
Yet, the opponents have put the Manmohan Singh government on the defensive. It has pledged that it will not allow India's sovereign interests to be compromised.
Meanwhile, former top scientists and engineers of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have emerged as the deal's most trenchant critics. Whether or not the government can ‘sell' the deal to the larger public will depend to a large extent on its success with this lobby of nuclear super-hawks.
The outcome of the current debate is likely to substantially influence the shape of the next stage in the process of the deal's finalisation: namely, a bilateral agreement between Washington and New Delhi, called the ”123 agreement” because it will amend Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954 pertaining to ”cooperation with other nations” to permit civilian nuclear commerce with India although it's a nuclear weapons power which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The high-pitched debate over the deal, in particular, over the legislation called the Henry J. Hyde U.S.-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, passed by the U.S. Congress 10 days ago, is being conducted largely in the media.
The Hyde Act restricts the scope of nuclear commerce with India and makes it conditional upon certain steps to be taken by India and upon periodic certification by the US President that it's complying with the conditions.
India's national newspapers are sharply divided over the deal and are roping in all manner of ”experts”, ”authorities” and officials to argue in its favour or to criticise it. Several are running a campaign or crusade for or against it.
Underlying these differences are other fault-lines too. These include rivalry between the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry, on the one hand, and the nuclear establishment, on the other; and divisions between those who want India to align itself completely with Washington, and those who prefer a degree of foreign policy autonomy.
The deal's supporters contend that the Hyde Act does not impose any new special restrictions on India, or that the conditions it stipulates, for instance, that India must not conduct further nuclear tests, have long been part of U.S. law. Some even concede that the deal reflects the asymmetry of power between India and the U.S.; but ”it can't get any better than this”.
”This is a pretty abject admission that the nuclear deal is inseparably tied to a larger agenda, of promoting a strategic partnership between India and the U.S.,” says Achin Vanaik, a professor of international relations and global politics at Delhi University. ”It was proposed by the Americans in the first place because they want India as a junior partner in their global system of alliances. It's dishonest to depict it as a deal about energy.”
Adds Vanaik: ”The ruling Indian elite craves recognition and approval from the U.S. And the nuclear deal provides it by making a special exception for India and declaring it a 'responsible nuclear power' -- as if states willing to kill millions of non-combatant civilians can ever be responsible.”
Some supporters of the deal argue that without it, India would have no access to imported uranium, without which it cannot run its ambitious nuclear power programme, which aims at a five-fold increase in electricity generation to 20,000 Mw by 2020: India is running out of domestic uranium ore, and cannot import uranium unless sanctions imposed after its nuclear blasts of 1998 are lifted.
”This is the DAE's self-created problem,” holds MV Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs expert at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. ”It has always set arbitrary targets which have never been reached. And it hasn't established that nuclear power is economically competitive or ecologically sound. In fact, it's neither in India's case. There's nothing sacrosanct, even convincing, about 20,000 Mw or the much larger 275,000 Mw goal that the DAE has declared for the mid-century.”
Besides, adds Ramana: ”India, strictly speaking, isn't running out of uranium, but only out of relatively high-quality ore. Mining lower-grade ores will increase the cost, but Indian will still have access to uranium. The deal isn't a precondition for access.”
The deal's critics make many arguments against the Hyde Act. First, it excludes from civilian cooperation technologies for spent-fuel reprocessing, uranium enrichment and heavy water production, and does not allow India to stockpile strategic reserves of fuel to last the lifetimes of imported reactors.
Secondly, they contend, the Hyde Act mandates India's participation with the U.S. in cooperative nuclear threat reduction through the involvement of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration and other agencies, as also India's compliance with certain plurilateral arms-trade restriction agreements which India has not signed. These obligations, they say, go well beyond International Atomic Energy Agency norms and ”constitute [an] intrusion into India's independent decision-making and policy matters”.
The third, and perhaps most important, objection of the critics, especially former DAE officials, is that the Act forces India to abandon its ”right to conduct future nuclear weapon tests, if these are found necessary to strengthen our minimum deterrence.”
This represents a considerable hardening of the nucleocrats' position: after the 1998 tests, most of them did not object to India's declaration of a unilateral moratorium on further testing although it was widely recognised that India's hydrogen bomb test was a dud. Only one former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission called for further testing.
Now, seven former DAE top officials, including two other former chairmen, demand that India preserve the ”right” to test.
”These are all parochial and sectarian pleas for a limitless Indian nuclear arsenal, which has nothing to do with strategic rationality or with the so-called doctrine of minimum credible deterrence that India professes,” says Vanaik. ”There's no reason why the international community should accept them.”
Equally flawed is the insistence on India's right to reprocess spent fuel burned in imported reactors because that's essential for its fast-breeder programme. These plants, theoretically, generate more fissile material (nuclear fuel such as plutonium) than they consume. India has drawn up plans to use the additional plutonium in special reactors for burning thorium, a nuclear material that does not readily fission. (India and has large stocks of thorium, but is short of uranium.)
Argues Ramana: ”Fast-breeders have not proved successful anywhere, certainly not in India, which has only experimented with a small laboratory-sized reactor, with poor results. As for the thorium cycle, it is as of now science fiction. Our calculations show that electricity from fast breeders will be so expensive that it would be better to run normal reactors with uranium that's five times costlier than it is today.”
However, the nuclear establishment is asserting itself strongly against the deal. Last Friday, the DAE chief convened a meeting in Mumbai of former senior officials. They issued a hawkish statement savaging the Hyde Act and demanding that Manmohan Singh's assurances about the deal be reflected in the 123 agreement, which is currently under negotiation.
”Of the political opposition and the nucleocrats' lobby, it's the lobby that's clearly more important for the government to tackle,” says Vanaik. ”If the government manages to split the lobby, it might still win relatively broad acceptance for the deal. Otherwise, opinion will remain polarised.”

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ZeeNews.com, December 19, 2006

What does India-US nuke deal mean?

Washington, Dec 19: President George W. Bush signed a landmark law on Monday that is a major step towards allowing the United States to sell civilian nuclear technology to India. Here is an overview of the deal and its implications:

What is the pact?
The legislation amends Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. It lets the US make a one-time exception for India to keep its nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The amendment overturns a 30-year-old US ban on supplying India with nuclear fuel and technology, implemented after India's first nuclear test in 1974.
Under the amendment, India must separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, and submit civilian facilities to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Why is it controversial?
Critics say it undermines the NPT, which holds that only countries that renounce nuclear weapons qualify for civilian nuclear assistance.
The accord sends the wrong message: it could undercut a US-led campaign to curtail Iran's nuclear program and open the way for a potential arms race in South Asia.
India says 14 of its 22 nuclear facilities are civilian. Critics say the pact could make bomb making at the other eight easier, as civilian nuclear fuel needs will be met by the United States.

What do the deal's supporters say?
Bush says the deal opens a new era in strategic relations between the world's two largest democracies, brings India's civilian nuclear program under international controls for the first time and opens a lucrative market for American business.
New Delhi, which relies on imported oil for some 70 percent of its energy needs, says nuclear power will help feed its rapidly expanding economy.

How is Pakistan involved?
Pakistan, India's nuclear rival, has sought a similar civilian technology deal with Washington but was refused. As a result, Islamabad has talked of expanding nuclear cooperation with China, a rising superpower. Pakistan is the only other confirmed nuclear power not to have signed the NPT.

International rivalries?
Some analysts see the India-US deal as part of attempts by larger powers the United States and China to shore up influence in South Asia by building up rival arsenals.



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