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Nuclear deal: on the brink of disaster

Satish Chandra

Unfazed by the legislative snub administered to it by way of the Hyde Act, the UPA Government seeks to operationalise the nuclear deal through a 123 agreement. This is no more than semantic jugglery to paper over some of India's concerns.

THOUGH NOT finalised, during the recent New Delhi discussions, the 123 agreement is likely to be signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington later in the year. The Government's blind commitment to the nuclear deal, as evidenced by its willingness to even contemplate a 123 agreement governed by a Hyde Act imposing all manner of humiliating restraints and conditionalities on India, coupled with the fact that it knows that the Left will not destabilise it if it proceeds ahead with the deal point to this.

The intensive negotiations with the United States are, essentially, a charade to project whatever little "concessions" the government obtains as great victories and as a rationale for going ahead with the deal. This is akin to the manner the fast-breeder reactor issue was played up as a great controversy in early 2006; later when India was permitted to keep designated fast-breeders unsafeguarded, the government projected this as a major achievement sweeping under the carpet all the other negatives flowing from the separation plan.

Founded on the deeply flawed India-U.S. joint statement of July 18, 2005, advanced through a separation plan that will hobble our strategic deterrent, and governed by the Hyde Act fashioned to impair our sovereignty and national security, the nuclear deal will undoubtedly constitute our biggest foreign policy disaster in recent times.

The original sin may be traced to the India-U.S. joint statement of July 18, 2005. The Indian side must be faulted as much for poor negotiation as for shoddy drafting on the following grounds:

One, while the U.S. obligations contained in the statement are essentially those of intent, India's obligations are definitive and substantive like the commitment to continue the moratorium on testing as part of the deal.

Two, the suggestion in the statement that the Indian obligations — such as separation of civil and military nuclear facilities, placement of all civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and signing of an Additional Protocol in respect of such facilities — are identical to those undertaken by nuclear weapon states constitutes a factual inaccuracy.

And, three, the statement contains a dissonance between an effort in the Indian projection to try and pass off India as a nuclear weapon state and the U.S. projection, which does not lend itself to any such interpretation.

The July 18 statement was sought to be justified on the grounds that the nuclear deal was the answer to India's energy problem; that it would help anchor India's strategic ties with the U.S.; that it would establish India's status as a nuclear weapon state; and that it would promote flow of high technology to India. These arguments are fallacious. Nuclear energy based on foreign reactors and foreign technology is much more expensive and will take longer to come on stream than that based upon indigenous technology and reactors. India's uranium reserves are adequate for its needs. The current paucity of uranium is a temporary phenomenon caused by our not having been sufficiently energetic in exploiting our reserves. The deal does nothing to promote the recognition of India as a nuclear weapon state, and it is puerile to suggest that it is the sine qua non for good India-U.S. relations, or that, with its finalisation, technology denials to India will suddenly vanish.

The separation plan negotiated with the U.S. will impose a considerable financial burden on the country and will damage both our civil and military nuclear programmes, which had evolved in a highly integrated manner, by depriving them of the hitherto enjoyed benefits of synergy. Entailing the designation of 35 nuclear facilities as civil, the separation plan seriously compromises our strategic capabilities by eroding the opacity of our weapons programme and by reducing its range and scope. The additional closure of Cirus will reduce our production of weapons grade plutonium by 30 per cent and the placement of 65 per cent of our thermal nuclear reactors under safeguards will reduce tritium available for weapons purposes by 65 per cent.

The U.S., far from seeking to adjust its laws and policies to promote nuclear cooperation with India as undertaken by it in the July 18 joint statement, has, through the Hyde Act, put in place a series of measures designed to neuter India's strategic capabilities, compromise its sovereignty and erode the independence of its foreign policy. The only adjustment made in existing U.S. laws and policies to promote nuclear cooperation with India is in not compelling it to accept "full scope" safeguards (comprehensive inspections on all facilities).

In order to contain the widespread opposition to the nuclear deal the Prime Minister, in his August 17, 2006, Parliament statement, echoing many of the concerns voiced against it, assured the nation that there would be no deal unless these were addressed. The Prime Minister's statement had little impact on the evolving U.S. legislation, which, in the form of the Hyde Act, retains most of the distasteful features, as enumerated below, specified by him as a cause of concern:

1) In blatant contravention of the assurance in the July 18 statement, the Hyde Act stops short of permitting full civil nuclear cooperation by placing restrictions on transfers of materials pertaining to uranium enrichment, reprocessing of spent fuel or production of heavy water.

2) It does not meet the "central imperative" of an "irreversible" lifting of restrictions on India as termination of cooperation can be triggered by any one of several factors such as testing, transfers by an Indian in violation of Nuclear Supplier Group or Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines, or non-conformity with any one of the numerous conditionalities imposed upon India under the legislation.

3) It requires an annual presidential "assessment" that India is in full conformity with its non-proliferation and other commitments.

4) It mandates annual and detailed scrutiny of India's nuclear weapon programme and unsafeguarded nuclear facilities.

5) It rules out the possibility of building up strategic reserves of nuclear fuel over the lifetime of India's reactors.

6) It envisages U.S. safeguards, over and above IAEA safeguards, including end use monitoring, which will enable U.S. inspectors to roam around our nuclear facilities.

7) It lays down that testing would lead to abrogation of the waiver authority under which civil nuclear cooperation is to be undertaken and thus erodes the "voluntary" nature of India's moratorium.

8) It imposes restrictions on India's foreign policy by, for instance, requiring it to fully and actively participate in U.S. efforts to sanction and contain Iran.

9) It requires India to join the Proliferation Security Initiative as well as abide by the policies of the Australia Group and Wassenaar Arrangement.

In the face of the intense domestic criticism of the nuclear deal, the passage of the Hyde Act ignoring all the red lines drawn by the Prime Minister, and the U.S. unreliability as demonstrated by the Tarapur experience, any prudent and self-respecting Government would have abandoned the idea of going ahead with the nuclear deal. Not so the United Progressive Alliance Government, which, unfazed by the rude legislative snub administered to it by way of the Hyde Act, seeks to operationalise the nuclear deal through a 123 agreement. This is no more than an exercise in semantic jugglery to paper over some of India's concerns. While the agreement may paper over these concerns, it can never satisfactorily address them as, in the final analysis, the terms of cooperation will have to be within the parameters of the Hyde Act, which contains the objectionable provisions that are at the root of the problem. In these circumstances, the proposed 123 agreement will not serve our purpose and the current negotiations are a waste of time.

Unlike many agreements that have a relatively easy and painless exit route, the nuclear deal offers no such option. It is like the proverbial tar baby. Once concluded, India will be stuck with its negative consequences for all time. Withdrawal would be financially onerous and politically ruinous with sanctions a constant probability.

In its anxiety to clinch the nuclear deal, the Government's actions have already had the following adverse consequences:

One, Indian foreign policy increasingly bears a made-in-Washington stamp. How else can one explain India's IAEA votes against Iran, its failure to take a tough stand against Pakistan on gut issues like terrorism, its acquiescence to a U.S. role in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, and its silence on the disastrous U.S. doings in Iraq and Palestine? These moves have alienated Iran, encouraged Pakistan to have a business-as-usual approach to its involvement with terrorist activities directed against us, eroded our influence in our own backyard, and reduced our standing in the international community.

Two, the valuable tradition of having a consensual foreign policy has been undermined as the government has ignored the widespread opposition to the deal.

Three, the scientific community has been alienated as its views have been disregarded and today there are deep divisions between the Department of Atomic Energy and the Ministry of External Affairs.

Four, our adversaries have, through the separation plan, been provided with a clear idea of our military nuclear facilities and thus with a readymade target list.

Five, the cavalier fashion in which this sensitive issue has been addressed has signalled that the government's commitment to India's strategic deterrent is less than total.

(The writer is a former Deputy National Security Adviser.)

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