Washington: The landmark nuclear accord between New Delhi and Washington risks collapse as Indian demands, including the right to continue testing nuclear weapons, undermine the U.S. rationale for seeking the deal, according to a report in USA Today on Friday.

India was making demands that would increase, "not lessen," its military nuclear capabilities and at the same time it developed closer ties with Iran, the report quoted senior administration officials and nuclear experts as saying.

"The Indians are being greedy," said Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center. The agreement might not be implemented before the Bush Administration left office.

Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State, who was in charge of the tough negotiations, has acknowledged that three rounds of talks produced little. "I don't question India's goodwill," he told the paper. "But there is a fair degree of frustration in Washington that the Indian Government has not engaged seriously enough or quickly enough with both the United States and the IAEA."

There is no deadline for completion of the deal, but two unnamed senior Bush Administration officials said India's demands could torpedo an agreement.

They said India wanted ``permission to buy uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing technology from the U. S." — both have military applications and sale is prohibited in most cases by U.S. law.

New Delhi has also sought no limits on testing nuclear weapons.

The administration reportedly told New Delhi that the United States reserved the right to terminate nuclear cooperation if India tested weapons again.

Robert Einhorn, a proliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and former senior State Department official in the Clinton administration, said the Department of Atomic Energy of India "may want the deal to fall through" to shield itself from competition from foreign contractors with nuclear engineering expertise, such as General Electric and Westinghouse.

Another possibility was "the Indian strategy is to hold out and hope the administration would cave in" to avoid the collapse of what it regarded as a foreign policy triumph.

Iran issue

Also India's relationship with Iran raises questions whether it will safeguard the nuclear technology it gets under the deal, it is pointed out. Only last month were two persons arrested in the U.S. on charges they bought computer chips used for missile guidance and illegally exported them to Indian government companies.

The report in USA Today said several senators led by Jon Kyl, Republican from Arizona, were writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to urge him to suspend cooperation with Iran. — PTI

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