WASHINGTON: An Amercan think-tank has produced a wish-list of Indian nuclear facilities which it wants placed under international safeguards. The Institute for Science and International Security’s (ISIS) wish-list includes six major fuel fabrication plants, four reprocessing plants, two breeder reactors, four enrichment facilities, nine research reactors, and nine heavy water production plants, all of which the think-tank deems as civil nuclear facilities.

The only units recognised as being associated with India’s fissile material production for nuclear weapons — and therefore possibly outside the ambit of safeguards — are five facilities in Trombay and the Rare Materials Project outside Mysore. These facilities produce and process plutonium and uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons.

Even in this limited list, the ISIS managers have a problem with a couple. The Cirus reactor, which was supplied by Canada and supported by the US under a peaceful nuclear pledge by India, should be safeguarded, the institute said, arguing that “if India declares this reactor as military, it would directly violate its commitment to Canada”.

The non-pro lobby is also pushing to wrap up India’s super-secret Rare Materials Project in Mysore to the safeguards lists, suspecting it of producing a limited amount of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, including some which may have been used in two of the low yield tests at Pokhran in 1998.

It is also possible, says ISIS, groping for answers, that the plant may be making enriched uranium for naval reactors and civil research reactors. In which case, it says, the prototype naval reactor too should be under safeguards.

Indian officials declined to speak on record on issues pertaining to the so-called separation of civil and military nuclear facilities, but they ridiculed any wish-list that did not take into account India’s unique status that was acknowledged in the July 18 agreement between US president George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and also the overarching political objectives stated by Washington.

The suggestion was that David Albright, president of ISIS and co-author of the wish-list, viewed the Indo-US nuclear deal from the limited prism of non-proliferation whereas the ongoing talks have a broader ambit. Albright is a familiar critic of India’s N-programme and Washington’s latest deal with New Delhi.

In a testimony before Congress in October, he told lawmakers that the agreement “could pose serious risks to the security of the US.”. —Dawn/Times of India News Service