Opinion - News Analysis   

India and nuclear proliferation issues

R. Ramachandran

Is a report by a Washington-based think tank a desperate attempt by the U.S. strategic community to torpedo the nuclear agreement with India?

A REPORT, titled: "India's Gas Centrifuge Programme: Stopping Illicit Procurement and the Leakage of Technical Centrifuge Know-How," was released last week by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Based on some silly arguments, the report has alleged that, contrary to the oft-made statement that India has an impeccable non-proliferation record, India has a "well-developed, active and secret Indian programme to outfit its uranium enrichment programme and circumvent other countries' export control efforts."

"In addition," it says, "Indian procurement methods for its nuclear programme leak sensitive nuclear technology." It goes on to say that before the U.S. and other countries engage in nuclear cooperation with India, "Indian procurement and export practices should be closely scrutinized."

Normally, one would have ignored such remarks but for the fact that these have been made by the well-known strategic analyst, David Albright, and his newfound co-author, Susan Basu. These are, therefore, likely to gain currency among U.S. policy makers and take on a life of their own unless demolished forthwith. The report would seem to be a desperate attempt by the U.S. strategic community to torpedo the nuclear agreement with India.

It is well known that the gas centrifuge uranium enrichment project, called the Rare Materials Project (RMP), of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is located at Ratehalli near Mysore and is operated by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), though Mr. Albright believes that the Indian government has rarely acknowledged it. It is true that — given the nature of the project — the DAE did not openly acknowledge it when it began in the mid-1980s. But in the early 1990s, the then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, P. K. Iyengar, had openly told the media about its existence. In subsequent years, former DAE officials have written newspaper articles about the programme's objectives and achievements. And, more recently, in the context of the civil-military separation, the RMP has repeatedly come up in discussions and the present chairman, Anil Kakodkar, has talked about its status vis-à-vis separation. In any case, why should its existence be declared to the world as long as it has the sanction of the nation's executive and Parliament.

Contradictory

According to the ISIS report, the procurements for the RMP are coordinated by BARC through the Indian Rare Earths (IRE) Ltd., a public sector undertaking under the DAE and public information about this procurement process is shrouded in secrecy. After stating this, Mr. Albright goes on to contradict himself by saying that, since at least 1984, IRE has regularly procured items for the RMP by inviting bids from potential suppliers. Now, if items have been procured openly through the public tendering process — as required by the Government's purchase and audit regulations — how does it become "shrouded in secrecy." The process of using IRE as the agency to do the procurement may have to do with internal logistics or administrative reasons. If the tender texts are explicit enough that Mr. Albright could figure out that the items sought were meant for the centrifuge facility, others would have figured it out too. So how does it become clandestine to be called proliferation?

The report alleges that IRE's method of procuring items through domestic and foreign suppliers is designed to hide the identity of the end-user, namely the RMP. If indeed, as Mr. Albright has concluded, domestic trading companies (who apparently procure from foreign manufacturers) do not reveal that they are purchasing for IRE or DAE and "thus the supplier escapes the responsibility for providing a dual-use item to a gas centrifuge plant." Mr. Albright has also claimed that certain South African court documents show the supplier companies included those who were part of the Dr. A. Q. Khan network. Now if this is indeed true, it points to the weak export control laws of the supplier countries, and it amounts to proliferation by those countries, and not by India.

For instance, the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR) have a very complex system of export licensing processes that involves the detailed categorisation of dual-use goods in what is known as the Commerce Control List (CCL), with an associated number to each item, and the associated category of controls (whether related to nuclear proliferation, or missile technology or anti-terrorism or national security or foreign policy.). So given an export licence request for RMP-related items, the system would immediately identify the possible end-use.

Moreover, since the 1974 test, the DAE and its subsidiaries have been embargoed against NP-related items. Under the post-1998 sanctions, IRE continues to be on the Entity List (as are BARC and other wings of DAE), which makes severely restricts exports of all dual-use items, not just NP-related. With additional requirements as part of the controls, such as "catch-all clause," "know your customer," "red flag," and, in recent years, the system of "post-shipment verification," rarely would a U.S. exporter be able to get past the multi-layered controls. If the U.S. Department of Commerce has detected such cases in the past, the report does not provide any evidence of it.

Yet another unsubstantiated allegation is that, the public tendering process would result in the leakage of sensitive technical information out of India to potential proliferators elsewhere through the detailed blue-prints and other technical documents that can be purchased against a fee.

This is indeed bizarre. One the one hand, Mr. Albright does not find the procurement process transparent enough and, on the other, finds fault with the bidding process.

In principle, this is possible only if bids are invited for turnkey execution for large subsystems, and not through individual components that the report has indicated. In any case, since Mr. Albright has tracked these advertisements for the last 20-odd years, he or the U.S. administration could have easily procured these public documents and seen what they revealed and, if indeed any of these contained sensitive information, the report would have done well to include that in the report as evidence to the allegation.

The DAE rejects all these allegations and, according to Dr. Kakodkar, the RMP facility has been designed, developed and entirely through the efforts of DAE engineers. In the process a network of domestic vendors and manufacturers, such as Mishra Dhatu Nigam (MIDHANI) Ltd. for maraging steel needed for the centrifuges, have been identified for these precision products slowly over the years. There is thus no need to engage in any illicit procurement, said a DAE official. The official also said that care is taken not to include any sensitive information in the tender documents.

Also, as part of the recent harmonisation of India's export controls for the nuclear trigger-list and dual-use goods, that include technology intangibles as well, possible leakage has been plugged to a great extent, the official added.

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