US Congress urged not to approve N-deal unconditionally
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 17: The US State Department’s former non-proliferation guru is urging Congress not to give an unconditional approval to the Bush administration’s nuclear deal with India.
“Congress can help ensure that US non-proliferation objectives are not undermined by the US-India nuclear deal, by permitting it to take effect only once India has stopped producing fissile material for nuclear weapons,” says Robert J. Einhorn, who was the US assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation from 1999 to2001.
The Bush administration, which formally sent the deal as a bill to Congress on Thursday, has warned that attaching conditions could kill the accord.
In a paper released on Friday, Mr Einhorn, who now heads the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, regrets that the US administration signed the nuclear accord without getting any such assurance.
He says that the Bush administration should have asked India to stop producing fissile material — plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the key ingredients of nuclear bombs before signing a nuclear deal with New Delhi.
“If India steps up production (of fissile material), Pakistan can be expected to follow suit, China could decide to resume production, and others may be encouraged to seek their own production capabilities,” Mr Einhorn warns.
He recalls that the Bush administration did propose a production cut off in negotiations leading up to the July US-India joint statement on civil nuclear cooperation, but dropped the idea when India balked.
The administration later made another attempt to limit fissile material production by proposing that all power-generating Indian nuclear reactors be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and therefore made ineligible for plutonium production.
Mr Einhorn points out that this proposal would have confined such production to two existing research reactors, but still would have enabled India to generate enough plutonium annually for six to 10 nuclear bombs.
But India’s nuclear establishment dug in its heels, calling publicly for minimizing safeguards coverage and avoiding constraints on India’s bomb-making capacity. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backed the nuclear establishment’s demands.
Mr Einhorn points out that a third of India’s reactors that exist or are under construction will be outside safeguards and eligible for plutonium production. Any future reactor can be designated by India as outside safeguards. “Even if only two of those power reactors outside safeguards are used as bomb factories, India would be able to produce more than 50 bombs a year.”
Commenting on India’s claim that it’s willing to adopt the same responsibilities and practices as the other nuclear powers, the state department’s former head for non-proliferation reminds Indian policy makers that the five original nuclear powers — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China — have all stopped producing fissile material for weapons.
“Apparently restraint in fissile material production is not one of the practices India wishes to emulate,” he adds.
India’s refusal to stop producing fissile material for weapon, Mr Einhorn argues, is also a cause of concern for the US.
