Kesava Menon & Nirupama Subramanian

The United States Ambassador to India, David C. Mulford, is a finance expert who has also served as an official in the Treasury Department. In an interview, Mr. Mulford spoke about the nuclear deal and related issues.

Q. How does the administration propose to move the nuclear agreement with India through Congress? We understand there are some problems there.

A. We have done two things already, which were part of that agreement. One, we have on behalf of India approached the ITER countries so that India can become a participant in the fusion project. And, that has been successful in the sense that the EU is going to invite India to the forthcoming meeting on September 12. It is true that there is a working group before that in which there are still a couple of countries who don't seem to want India included. But it seems an important first step in terms of India's entry into ITER. Secondly six companies were, as reported two days ago in the US, being removed from the entities list, which again is a major step. This goes back not only to the White House agreement but also to the NSSP project, which was ongoing and had a number of developments in it. You may remember restrictions were lifted in respect of space, high tech and civil nuclear. This has now gone further with these entities being de-listed. So these two things we have accomplished and I think in quite important sectors.

Thirdly, there is a campaign now that has to be made in Congress. Under our system of government as you know, the Congress is a separate branch of government and in order to regularise or normalise the relationship with India we need to make some changes in our legislation. It is under discussion at the moment exactly how to make those changes. That is not decided but in any case there will have to be agreement with the Congress to get that done. There is need therefore to mobilise support from both Republican and Democrats side of the Congress. That will in turn depend in part on how successfully we can make that campaign. Investing the support of the Indian-American community for example, which supports both Democrats and Republicans and hopefully they will lobby both groups. American business, which has an interest in this area, has to be mobilised.

There has to be the administration itself. Now the President has made this agreement. He has committed that he will try to get this done. So that's a major development in the bureaucratic sense because the administration is on board. Now it's true there are some people in the administration, some people in the so-called non-proliferation bureaucracy who may personally not be happy about this. That's true. You get that in your bureaucracy from time to time. So those people will have to find out in their own minds whether they work for the opposition or the President. So we have to see. We will go up and have hearings. September 8 we will have the first hearing. Nick Burns will testify on the House side and that will be followed by testimony on the Senate side. Ultimately they will have to move forward on this. Hopefully we can get this done prior to the visit of the President.

Q. Can this be done by by-passing Congress through an executive order?

A. No. My understanding is that there are a couple of options how you can do this. But they need Congressional approval.

Q. Won't there be opposition from members of Congress to the nuclear deal with India when it will have implications for the efforts to rollback the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes?

A. I don't think so because the reasoning on this...First of all, let me step back and remind you that when the Secretary came out here in March she made that very important statement about the US wishing to assist India to become a global power in the 21st century. That was clearly cleared by the President. I can't think in my experience of a more unambiguously supportive policy statement made by a senior member of the administration with the clear support of the President. There were some people in the media in India who took exception to this statement and felt it was a sort of an arrogant comment for the US to make. But I think most people recognised it for what it was--a genuine and remarkable statement of support and an expression of support that will extend into the future.

The second point about that is that the logic of that statement has been deliberate enough. Namely, if you have made that statement and one of the country's major restraints in realising that vision is energy, then you have to engage in the real energy problems with that country. India has a lack of gas and oil. It is energy dependent and like the US it requires some dependence on the development of civil nuclear energy. And, the President therefore is committed to do that. In effect saying you can't honour your statement unless you address these real problems and one of these problems in India is this civil nuclear.

Then, you have criteria that justify doing this. First of all we have a very close partnership. Secondly India is a country that needs for its development, civil nuclear energy. It is a democracy, it has a long and distinguished history as a non-proliferator. It has recently implemented non-proliferation legislation and it did so quite quickly under NSSP and is in the process now of implementing it. If you look at that and take the view that India is meeting the standards that major nuclear powers are meeting and therefore say that we need to regularise relationships and they need to assume the same duties and they need to have roughly the same benefits even though they are not signatories to the NPT.

That does not apply in any way to North Korea, Iran, or even to Israel or Pakistan. You know Israel is an important country but it does not need nuclear power for its development. So, I think, India can truly be distinguished as a unique case and I say that because if you advance that unique case you can do so without violating or compromising your own commitment to non-proliferation. The US commitment to non-proliferation and the international architecture is not going to change. And just because we want to find a special way to recognise India's unique position doesn't mean that we are giving up ours and undermining or moving away from it or even that we'll be any less intense in our following the non-proliferation regime.

Q. Could you have done this unilaterally?

A. We are consulting the other countries, the NSG. That's going on now.

Q. That's the other hurdle, isn't it?

A. We have made a survey of their initial reactions to the announcement and we will be conducting an in-depth discussion with them. The initial knee-jerk reaction to the agreement could be that this seems to be inconsistent with the non-proliferation policies of the US. But if you look into the issue and dialogue with and explain what your reasoning is and how it is going to work, it seems to us that we can make that a saleable and an accomplishable objective without violating or damaging the proliferation regime. I don't think it undermines our authority with North Korea or Iran at all.

Q. What if support from Congress is not forthcoming?

A. Then the mission would not have been accomplished.

You may have heard that people were running around changing words even as the President and the Prime Minister spoke and the document was not issued until that evening. The fact that we didn't reach agreement a little earlier prevented us from pre-conversations with key members of Congress. It was just announced by the President. In our system that is a serious problem because members of Congress believe that one of their prerogatives is to have advance notice of certain controversial things that are going to be brought up to them. This could not be done in that case so some of these people have said, "Oh! I wasn't consulted so sorry I can't commit myself at this point until I have looked into it". So some journalists are saying that we have a big fight because the Republicans are not prepared to commit themselves at this point. But, that's a function of the way in which it was done and of the system. There will be testimony and the testimony is a very important part of our process. It is public and it is subject to incredibly close examination by the media. So the whole thing will be very transparent and we will find out in due course how the ducks line up.

Q. If the U.S. is so concerned about India's energy needs why does it oppose the Iran pipeline?

A. There's other gas in the world. In Turkmenistan, in Sakhalin islands. India has invested in that. There's not just one source of gas in the world.

But on Iran, I think it's important to be clear and to be judicious on your treatment of that issue. What we have done with the Indian government is that we have advised them when this project became known that we have legislation-the Iran-Libyan Sanctions Act on our books which requires the administration to look at investments that appear to help develop and monetise that development of Iranian natural resources. And, to impose sanctions on parties that participate in that process. But you need to bear several things in mind.

First of all, the law has never been used. But the presence of the law has, some people believe, discouraged some countries from doing things, particularly Libya. It is regarded as having been a successful influence over Libya. Secondly, the law is very unclear until the specifics of a situation are laid before it. So that nature of the project, the participants in the project, the business plan, what nationalities the players are-are relevant to how that law would operate. But since the law has never been used nobody is really sure how it will be implemented in any particular case. So until you know whether this project is feasible economically, and that is very unclear at this point. Until you know who the players are going to be involved in this, investors and so on, you don't know how the situation will be impacted by the laws. What we have done is draw the attention of the government here to the fact that we have this law and they need to keep that in mind as they go forward in their examination of this project. We have not really gone beyond that. I think what we have said is that we will continue to work with India, it is not an issue that is dominating everything, it is just something we need to be open about and they need to be under no misapprehension that we do have that law on our books.

I also would like to make it very clear that the appearance of the pipeline issue has nothing to do with the civil nuclear initiative. The meeting I had with the Minister of Petroleum was weeks before and there is no link whatsoever between those two.

Q. Many in India believe that the Pakistan establishment has not completely ended its support for terrorist groups acting on this side of the Line of Control. Does the US share that assessment and if so what does it propose to do?

A. The US position is very clear. Pakistan is a major ally of the US and very helpful in the global war on terror. It is a key asset in the whole Afghanistan situation. The President values the relationship with President Musharraf. Yet it is recognised that Pakistan is a country with very significant problems and also that the incursions into Kashmir are unfortunate on the one hand and unacceptable on the other. The US has used its influence to diminish it and seek to have that stopped. That has I'm told had some considerable influence on the flow of incursions. I understand that camps still exist and the US would like it if they didn't and the President has made that clear. But I think what is important to remember and understand is that both the US and India have a strong, mutual interest in some progress and success in Pakistan. The US has given a lot of aid to Pakistan for the purpose of development economically, encouraging and sponsoring the development of democracy. And the objective there is to help Pakistan become economically successful, to move towards greater democratisation and to become a positive force in the neighbourhood, which is entirely in the interests of India. I think things are not as bad as they were. There is improvement. We have strongly supported the Indo-Pak peace dialogue. We like the progress we are seeing. But we are not the manager of that. We are not in the middle of it, we are not the referee and likewise we don't control Pakistan either. We have to look at the progress that has been made thanks to the initiative that both India and Pakistan took.

Q. One issue that has cropped up is Dawood Ibrahim. Are you prepared to weigh in on the side of India?

A. We have a clear, very strong view. He is a highly undesirable character. We have an overall relationship between us of shared interest in making progress in the war on terror wherever it takes place and whoever is involved.

Q. The US has been against India's candidature to the UN Security Council...

A. That isn't true. The US has indicated that its priority at this point in time is to press for reform in the UN. The UN needs fundamental reform and that is our highest priority. A part of that reform, but only a part, is what happens to the Security Council. The US is on record favouring the expansion of the Security Council but as to the details of that...has been unwilling to come out and specify until those other reforms have been undertaken. Our view is that there is no point in simply expanding the Security Council in a non-reformed UN.

As to India, the US issued some criteria for developing countries' membership of the Security Council. A lot of people looking at those criteria came to the conclusion that the only country in the world that could meet those was India. And the US didn't say that wasn't true. The US is very sympathetic to India.

However, India has joined another group, G-4, which has kind of an "all or nothing"- all four or none of us - and that has introduced for India an enormous inflexibility in their position. The US is not going to agree to that. They have rejected that and they will continue to reject that. In a way if you want to be in a group that is not acceptable and you want to stick there then I would say you got a problem.

Q. Is it because of Germany?

A. I think it is clear what it is. I think the US is not favourable to Germany. All this was made clear to India but India stayed in G-4 despite that.

The Hindu