WASHINGTON, Feb 27: Instead of endorsing the July 18 agreement for nuclear cooperation, the US and India are likely to sign a new document which will exclude some key elements of the previous deal, diplomatic sources told Dawn.
The key element missing from the new document will be India’s recognition as one of “the leading countries with advanced nuclear technology,” as mentioned in the agreement signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the White House on July 18.
The new draft prepared in Washington, and opposed by New Delhi, recognizes India only as a country with a “developing nuclear power programme.”
In his speech to the Asia Society last week, President George Bush endorsed this demotion of India’s status. “Under this partnership, America will work with nations that have advanced civilian nuclear energy programmes such as Britain, France, Japan and Russia to share nuclear fuels with nations like India that are developing nuclear energy programmes,” he said.
The Indians are trying hard to get this draft ‘improved’ before President Bush arrives in New Delhi on March 1 and want to replace it with a description more suitable to the international status that they envisage for their country.
The new US draft also seeks to limit the number of reactors that India can keep back for military purposes from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection and control regime. The draft requires India’s new fast breeder reactors and its research labs to be placed within the nuclear control regime, and it says that the deal should last “in perpetuity.”
The Indians are trying to amend this proposition as well, demanding instead that their fast breeder reactors be kept outside the IAEA regime. They also want a mutually agreed draft to set a clear date for India to be allowed to resume buying enriched uranium from the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Indian officials, who discussed the new draft with US Under-secretary of State Nicholas Burns in New Delhi last week, are believed to have complained that the US negotiators have “moved the goalposts” since the July 18 agreement.
Diplomatic sources here say that these differences are unlikely to be resolved before President Bush arrives in New Delhi. But the differences will not be allowed to shadow the visit. Instead of highlighting the differences, a mutually agreed draft would list them as ‘technical details’ to be worked out later by US and Indian technocrats, the sources said.
Although the nuclear cooperation agreement had previously been billed as the cornerstone of a warming US-India alliance, senior US officials now insist that it’s wrong to link the success or failure of the trip to the nuclear deal.
“Certainly not,” said Mr Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley when asked if the failure to reach a nuclear deal would also fail the visit. “There is a long list of things that we are doing together with India, a long list of areas where we hope to have some things to announce during the trip,” he told a recent briefing.
The ‘long list’ that Mr Hadley mentioned includes parallel agreements on space projects and science and technology, an accord on joint action against cyber crime and terrorism and joint efforts on agriculture for launching a ‘second green revolution’.
During the visit, the US may also announce the upgrading of its embassy in New Delhi with 13 new senior staff and the setting up of a special high-level Indo-US commission that will work for a breakthrough at the stalled Doha Round of the world trade talks.
All these will be highlighted as major achievements of the Bush visit, the sources said.
