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Discuss nuclear deal in Parliament, says Vajpayee

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has demanded an assurance from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that no bilateral Indo-United States agreement on nuclear cooperation would take place without a thorough discussion in Parliament.

In a two-page statement released here on Friday by two of his former Cabinet colleagues, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, Mr. Vajpayee has expressed his apprehension that the nuclear deal would be concluded before the end of this year and it would “conform” to “highly objectionable provisions of the Hyde Act”.

Seeking assurances that the Government will not do anything beyond what was spelt out by the Prime Minister in Parliament when the issue was discussed at length, Mr. Vajpayee said he was apprehensive that India was about “to change our long-held policies on these [nuclear-related] issues so that they conform to the Hyde Act [passed by the U.S. Congress in December 2006] which is to govern the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal”.

He said that he feared the Government of India had set up a task force about a month ago precisely to “reverse our stated nuclear policies with a view to bringing them in conformity” with the Hyde Act.

Mr. Sinha, who presented to the media the Bharatiya Janata Party’s case on the subject, said that the task force was to come up with a “creative approach” and he suspected that the idea was to change India’s nuclear policy after presenting this as a result of suggestions of the task force — not on prompting by the U.S.

Mr. Sinha said the Government would conform to the Hyde Act provisions but pretend that this had been done as a result of internal policy making.

The two points in the Hyde Act that Mr. Vajpayee was strongly opposed to were banning of further nuclear tests by India and working actively with the U.S. for an early conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT).

On the first point, Mr. Sinha agreed, in response to questions, that Mr. Vajpayee had himself offered to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (provided other countries, including those of the region like Pakistan and China also sign it) to convert his public declaration of a “voluntary moratorium” on nuclear testing to a legally binding international obligation. That was a different situation as it would mean other nuclear states would also be bound by the CTBT. But now, once the Indo-U.S. deal is through and the Hyde Act comes into effect, India will lose its option of conducting a nuclear test even if another country were to test.

Earlier Mr. Shourie had said Mr. Vajpayee had kept India’s nuclear testing option open even when he declared a moratorium immediately after Pokhran II in May 1998.

On the second issue – the FMCT – the Vajpayee said it would be “most unfortunate if we agree to verification by national technical means” as that would effectively put the U.S. in the driver’s seat rather than an international and effective certification system” that would function in a “non-discriminatory and transparent manner” and “enable India to have a place at the high table in the functioning of the FMCT.”

However, experts dealing with the subject point out that so far there were no signs that India was about to cave in on this. As recently as June 18, at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, India had reiterated its stand that the FMCT should be an internationally verifiable treaty.

Mr. Sinha and Mr. Shourie were asked whether Mr. Vajpayee statement was tilting at windmills. To this Mr. Sinha’s response was that the setting up of the task force, the confidence expressed by U.S. Secretary of State that the Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement would be concluded by the year-end, and the quick visits by Indian delegations to the U.S. had aroused their suspicions. After all, after the Hyde Act was passed he did not see how the two countries could reconcile their conflicting positions. The BJP came to the conclusion that India was about to cave in.

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