NEW DELHI: The United States-India nuclear cooperation agreement, initialled almost two years ago, has run into obstacles in the final stages of negotiation. Unless the hurdles are quickly overcome, it seems likely that the deal’s proponents in the US will lose momentum and President George W. Bush’s administration will fail to clinch an agreement before Bush becomes an increasingly unpopular lame-duck president.
India is coming under growing pressure to compromise its position on the deal’s provisions so as to seal an agreement.
The deal is a special initiative of the Bush administration, which is making a one-time exception for India in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime although India is a nuclear weapons-state and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
There is a chance that Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will make a last-ditch political-level attempt to iron out their differences and reach a compromise when they meet early next month at the G-8 summit to which India is invited as observer. However, official-level talks have so far failed to resolve many sticking-points: the scope of “cooperation”, or the extent to which the US exports nuclear technology and equipment to India; guarantees of uninterrupted supply of fuel and spares; India’s “right” to reprocess imported fuel; and the consequences of another nuclear weapons blast by India.
The last round of talks between “technical experts” of the two countries took place in London earlier this week, but apparently failed to narrow differences.
Indian officials have tried to put a positive spin on the London meetings. “We clarified certain concepts and exchanged ideas making further progress towards a mutually-agreed text,” India’s foreign ministry spokesman said. But divergences persist.
Last December, the US Congress passed the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act 2006 (Hyde Act), which left some of these differences unresolved. It did not amend some sections of the (US) Atomic Energy Act, 1954 which limit cooperation with countries that are NPT non-signatories or have conducted nuclear explosions, as India did in 1998.
Bush signed the Act into law, but qualified it with a “Presidential Signing Statement”. This raised hopes that his administration would soon reach a bilateral deal with India called the “123 agreement” (because it would amend Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act) in ways that would meet New Delhi’s objections to the Hyde Act.
However, neither official-level talks nor documents exchanged by the two sides during and after Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon’s visit to Washington early this month broke the deadlock.
Recently, US under secretary of state R. Nicholas Burns cancelled a visit to India, planned for May 21. He now says he might visit India in the next week or two to finish the work that remains to be done on the deal; “we are 90 percent there...” But the rest “will require a little hard work and some compromises”.
“The primary reason the talks have failed so far is that India opposes clauses in the Hyde Act which would terminate the deal if India tests another nuclear weapon,” says Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a professor at the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University here. “The Act also prevents India from reprocessing spent fuel or importing uranium enrichment technology. Unless Washington can tailor the ‘123 agreement’ to meet India’s objections, or India dilutes its opposition, an agreement is unlikely to materialise,” Chenoy said.
India’s early hopes that Bush would make a major departure from the Hyde Act by citing the “Presidential Signing Statement” have greatly weakened in recent weeks.
US legal experts are of the view that the President cannot amend a law passed by Congress, Bush stated his “Signing” reservations largely to placate the Indian domestic opposition, which demands there be no change from the original agreement of July 18, 2005.
This puts Manmohan Singh in a bind. Singh has made solemn commitments to India’s Parliament that there would be no departure from the 2005 agreement under which the US offered to treat India on a par with other nuclear weapons-states.
The agreement says the
US accepts that “as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such statesà (such as the US)”. In return, India “would be ready to assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages."
According to Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which opposes the deal, “even if the Bush administration wanted to, the US negotiators simply do not have the leeway to concede much more to India”. The US negotiating position is now defined by requirements set forth in the Hyde Act and Atomic Energy Act “These legal provisions specifically call for termination of cooperation in the event of further Indian testing and US consent rights on reprocessing and enrichment, among other requirements.”
If the Indian government insists on severe amendments to these by demanding the right to reprocess fuel or conduct tests, “the deal is as good as dead because the Bush White House has neither the political capital nor the inclination to do so”, Kimball has been quoted as saying.
Kimball is among signatories to a letter addressed to members of Congress, asking for a rejection of the deal if it fails to meet US legal requirements for civil nuclear cooperation. Other signatories are Hal Bengelsdorf, former director for the office for non-proliferation policy at the Energy Department, ambassador George Bunn, a negotiator of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Joseph Cirincione at the Centre for American Progress and ambassador Ralph Earle II, former director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
The US reportedly offered some concessions, such as ensuring fuel supplies through third countries, and effectively diluting the US’s right to ask India to return plant, equipment and nuclear fuel to it in case the agreement is terminated. But India found these short of the pledged “full civilian nuclear cooperation”.
“It is clear that difficulties have arisen because India’s hardline nuclear lobby, especially serving and retired officials of the Department of Atomic Energy, has stiffened its stance,” argues M.V. Ramana, an independent expert attached to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. “They insist India must have the right to conduct nuclear tests, especially if other countries to do so. Anything less would amount to imposing on India the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which it rejected in 1996.”
Adds Ramana: “The hardliners also demand that India must have the right to reprocess imported nuclear fuel after it is used in power reactors because India’s long-term nuclear programme hinges crucially on reprocessed plutonium, to be used in fast-breeder reactors. This makes for a degree of inflexibility which Bush will find it difficult to accommodate.”
Manmohan Singh can still clinch a “123 agreement” if he takes a high-level political decision to make compromises even at the risk of courting domestic opposition. But it is unclear if Singh will want to take such risks given that both the Left and the Right will want to hold him down to his commitment that India will accept nothing less than full-scope civilian nuclear cooperation with the US, with guaranteed supplies of fuel.
India drove a hard bargain on a crucial component of the nuclear deal last year when it agreed to put only 14 out of 22 civilian power reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency inspections to ensure that nuclear materials won’t be diverted to military uses. India also secured exemption for fast-breeder reactors and nuclear-military facilities.
“Now there’s a good chance”, says Ramana, “that hard bargaining won’t produce a ‘123 agreement’ drafted on India’s terms. Yet, many possibilities will open up for India’s energy options as well as her stance vis-à-vis a ‘strategic partnership’ with Washington.”
The Indian establishment built a hyped-case for the nuclear deal by claiming that atomic power is absolutely indispensable for India’s growing energy needs. But it is far from clear that India needs nuclear power, which is expensive, accident-prone and fraught with serious hazards, especially high-level wastes which remain radioactive for centuries.
“The present moment offers India an opportunity to rethink its energy strategy and emphasise conservation and renewable energy”, says Ramana. “It will also create a powerful case for revising its strategic stance and adopting a policy independent of the US, in keeping with Non-Alignment.”
It is not clear if India’s increasingly globalising and pro-US elite will muster the courage for such revision.
But it will come under pressure to do so from Centre-Left forces, which oppose the Singh government’s pro-Western and neoliberal orientation. The only alternative to that may be policy disorientation in New Delhi, and growing popular disenchantment with the Singh government. —Dawn/ The IPS News Service
