Opinion - Editorials   

India's shameful vote against Iran

The decision to vote adversarially against Iran at Saturday's crucial meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is evidence of the Manmohan Singh Government's shameful willingness to abandon the independence of Indian foreign policy for the sake of strengthening its "strategic partnership" with the United States. Made in stealth without any broad-based discussion within the Government or with allies and national political parties, the top-level political decision (which was reported in The Hindu of September 17) conflicts with proclaimed Indian policy. It bears emphasis that the resolution adopted by the IAEA Board 22-1 with 12 abstentions has grave international implications. Specifically, it recalls Iran's alleged "failures in a number of instances," as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to meet its obligations under its NPT Safeguards Agreement, and its alleged "policy of concealment." Adopting a menacing tone, the resolution finds Iran in "non- compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency's Statute"; among other things, this Article allows the Board "to report the non-compliance to ...the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations." Further, the resolution finds that Iran's nuclear activities and "the resulting absence of confidence" that its nuclear programme is "exclusively for peaceful purposes" have given rise to "questions that are within the competence of the Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security." Finally, it threatens that the Board "will address the timing and content of the report" to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council for possible punitive action.

This Bush-led resolution is unjust as well as provocative — if the idea is to find a solution through intelligent negotiation. Iran and the IAEA have resolved most of the issues in dispute; in fact, the IAEA Director General reported to the Board as recently as September 2 that "good progress has been made in Iran's correction of the breaches and in the Agency's ability to confirm certain aspects of Iran's current declarations." The only major outstanding question is the extent of the Iranian centrifuge research programme. At the very least, the resolution steps up the pressure on Iran in infringement of its sovereign rights. It is possible that it is designed to short-circuit the prospect of a negotiated solution, and to push the world towards another major confrontation. Anticipating public criticism of its volte face, the Manmohan Singh Government claims it voted the way it did because the "door for dialogue" was being kept open. It also insists that the decision to abandon its earlier insistence on consensus and break ranks with Russia, China, the non-aligned bloc, and even Pakistan has nothing to do with the July 18 U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement. These arguments are disingenuous. The craven vote of September 24 underlines the fact that Indian foreign policy suffers from insecurity, a poor understanding of the realities of the international situation, a lack of confidence in the nation's strategic weight, and an absence of belief in, or commitment to, genuine independence and non-alignment. The downward trajectory initiated by the National Democratic Alliance Government in dealings with the United States, signalled by support, of all things, to `Star Wars,' has hit a new low. It seems that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's negative remarks on the Iran-India pipeline in July were not happenstance but the opening lines of a script rewritten in Washington.

In the run-up to the crucial vote, New Delhi was told in no uncertain terms that the fate of the civilian nuclear agreement would hinge on changing its line on Teheran. When Congressional hearings on the agreement began in Washington earlier this month, the Bush administration joined individual Congressmen in orchestrating exaggerated concern about India's relationship with Iran. Until then, New Delhi had been correctly insisting that the IAEA was the proper forum to resolve lingering questions about Iran's civilian nuclear programme and that equal weight needed to be given to Iranian obligations (not to produce nuclear weapons) and rights (to the full nuclear fuel cycle) under the NPT. The IAEA Director General's latest report did observe that Iran's full cooperation was overdue and indispensable but also confirmed that nine issues out of ten had been resolved. As a three-part analysis published last week in this newspaper showed, such a situation can hardly be considered "non-compliance" of a magnitude threatening international peace and security.

It's a bit rich that India — which has refused to join the NPT, has turned its back on accepting full-scope IAEA safeguards, has conducted six nuclear explosions (in 1974 and 1998), and is a declared nuclear weapons state — is able to join in a `proliferation' indictment of Iran. This means embracing the worst kind of double standards. At stake is not the danger of proliferation — nobody has produced any evidence that Iran is pursuing, or has ever pursued, a nuclear weapons programme — but the right of a sovereign country to develop peaceful nuclear power as a source of energy and engage in the nuclear fuel cycle. The NPT allows all parties to the international nuclear bargain to develop uranium enrichment facilities of the kind being built at Natanz, provided they are safeguarded. The U.S. and its allies want to rewrite the rules so that they will be able to control both the nuclear fuel cycle and the commerce around nuclear fuel and reactors. That is why the non-aligned group of countries has tended to stand with Iran on this issue. Teheran has made several positive proposals aimed at reassuring the international community that its civilian facilities will not be misused for military purposes. Washington, however, is not interested in any such proposal. Iran shall not be allowed to enrich uranium, it has decided imperiously. Beyond that, it wants to strangulate Iran's oil and gas sector, and bring about "regime change" in that country. Instead of recognising this truth, and also the fact that American demands on Iran will be unending, the United Progressive Alliance Government has compromised the national interest by helping to prepare the ground for another possible conflict in India's own region. Even at this eleventh hour, the Government must change course. When the subject of Iran comes up for discussion in the Board of Governors meeting in November, it must not support any European or U.S. move to take the matter to the Security Council.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

India's shameful vote against Iran
Social security for unorganised workers
India's IAEA vote was decided in advance
China's second manned space mission
A question of lifestyles
Why equality is the best policy
Despair is still not an option in Iraq
Of Governors
Extend reservation
Create more brands
Chappell-Ganguly spat

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu