The Hindu : National : Nothing privileged about draft safeguards text, say officials

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Nothing privileged about draft safeguards text, say officials

Siddharth Varadarajan

It has not been made available to UPA-Left Coordination Committee: Left

Consequences of releasing draft being examined
IAEA Secretariat bound by specified procedure

New Delhi: There is no diplomatic or protocol-related obstacle to the draft safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency being made public, senior government officials have told The Hindu.

On Wednesday, the Left parties complained that the draft text “has not been made available” to the United Progressive Alliance-Left committee on Indo-U.S. civil nuclear cooperation. Noting that this ran counter to the understanding last November that the outcome of India’s talks with the IAEA would be presented to the committee “for its consideration before it finalises its findings” on the nuclear deal, the Left said that “in such a situation” it was firmly of the opinion that the government should not proceed to seek approval of the draft text from the IAEA’s Board of Governors.

Though it has shared a summary of the draft’s formulations, the government has so far expressed its unwillingness to part with the actual text on the plea that it would violate diplomatic protocol. On its part, the Left too had not pressed this point, mainly because its stated objections to the deal are of a political rather than “technical” nature.

But now that the Left has upped the ante by seeking the text, the government is examining the consequences of releasing the draft and appears to be not entirely averse to the idea. “I think there is no real problem in us doing so,” a senior official said on Thursday.

While the IAEA Secretariat is bound by a specified procedure and cannot release the draft to the public or to members of the Board without express sanction from New Delhi, the government is bound only by the rules it chooses to make for itself.

Until now, some officials had argued that the “early” release of the text could give the non-proliferation lobby in the West extra time to agitate against the specific language India had inserted to protect its right to take “corrective measures” if its safeguarded reactors ever faced a fuel supply disruption.

These lobbies have already warned members of the IAEA Board and the Nuclear Suppliers Group that any reference to “corrective measures” would violate the letter and spirit of the safeguards regime. They have also suggested that India might try to use the safeguards agreement to establish a distinct status for the indigenous reactors it has agreed to safeguard, making them subject to inspections only when they use foreign fuel rather than in perpetuity.

With the process of Board approval expected to take at least one month, however, officials now feel India has nothing to lose by allowing western non-proliferation activists a few extra weeks to sharpen their knives.

At the same time, senior officials have reservations about the utility of sharing the text with the Left when the latter’s objections to the deal were not about the nitty-gritty of safeguards but the principle of nuclear cooperation with the U.S. “At the end of the day, I don’t think [making it public] is really going to resolve the issue,” an official said.

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