WASHINGTON, Nov 19: India is quietly urging the United States to grant it the same status given to a nuclear weapon state under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, diplomatic sources in Washington said.
The sources noted that India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee raised this issue in his first comments on a US Senate bill that endorsed the Indo-US nuclear agreement on Thursday with a massive 85 to 12 margin.
Mr Mukherjee said India wants `the final text of the bill to conform to the parameters set down in the July statement of Prime Minister Singh and President Bush, and also the separation plan which was placed in the (Indian) parliament in March, 2005’.
The July 18 agreement allows India `the same responsibilities and practices’ and `the same benefits and advantages’ granted to a nuclear weapon state under the NPT.
The granting of a nuclear weapon state status also has an immediate benefit for India. India currently has a 20-year old operational fast breeder reactor and is also building a `prototype’ 500MW reactor.
Under the nuclear deal, the US wants both reactors under safeguards. US negotiators cite the example of Japan, two of whose reactors -- Joyo and Monju – are safeguarded. But India says that Japan is a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT while the July 18 agreement gives India the same status allowed to a nuclear weapon state.
This week two senior US officials – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary Nicholas Burns – assured India that these and other differences can be sorted out in a joint conference of the US Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Bush administration wants this session in early December and both Republican and Democrat lawmakers appear to have accepted the proposal, although no date has yet been finalised.
India has also expressed its displeasure with a Senate provision requiring President Bush to certify that Delhi is `fully and actively’ participating in efforts to contain Tehran's nuclear programme before US-India nuclear cooperation could proceed.
An earlier version, passed in the US House of Representatives in July, also raises this concern.
In the Senate, Republican and Democrat lawmakers displayed a rare cooperation to defeat all the five so-called killer amendments that would have been absolutely unacceptable to the Indian government.
These included provisions for India to cease military cooperation with Iran, continued US condemnation of India's 1998 test based on a UN Security Council resolution and three bills involving increased presidential certification of India's activities.However, four minor amendments did pass. One of these requires the US government to submit its assessments about India's nuclear weapons programme. Another requires further clarifications of US nuclear policy. The third calls for establishing a threat reduction programme between the US and India. The fourth requires India to align its policies with the UN Security Council resolutions on Iran, a condition New Delhi is already fulfilling.
A. N. Prasad, Former director of India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, told journalists that New Delhi is also unhappy with the proposed US policy on supply of uranium. He described this as “a hand-to-mouth approach for the lifetime of a reactor” and said that it was not in India’s favour.
India has 14 reactors in commercial operation and nine under construction. Nuclear power supplies about 3 percent of India's electricity.
By 2050, nuclear power is expected to provide 25 percent of the country's electricity. India’s huge thorium reserves - about 25 percent of the world's total - are expected to fuel its nuclear power programme for a long time.
Another difference between India and the US revolves around the separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities. The two countries have been doing some hard bargaining over which facilities should be included in the civilian and military lists.The US is pressing India to expand the list of facilities to be brought under IAEA safeguards. But India says safeguards should be "voluntary," as applicable to the nuclear weapons-states recognized under the NPT.
The sharpest differences focus on India's fast-breeder reactor programme. These are special reactors that use fission caused by fast neutrons and burn highly concentrated or enriched fuel. Theoretically, they generate more fissile material than they consume.
Under the latest proposal made to the US, India would keep its "experimental" fast-breeder reactors outside the civilian list. It would also like two civilian power reactors near Chennai, built in the 1980s, to be exempted from IAEA inspections.
Above all, India would like facilities at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, near Mumbai, to be spared external inspections. Some of them are critical to its nuclear weapons program. These facilities include CIRUS, a small reactor built with Canadian and U.S. help and commissioned in 1960, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.
India has indicated "flexibility" on CIRUS. Under the agreement signed in the 1950s with the US and Canada, CIRUS was only meant for "peaceful" uses, but India reprocessed spent- fuel to explode its first bomb in 1974.
