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POLITICS: Lawmakers Call a Halt to Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Analysis by Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Dec 6 2007 (IPS) - The Manmohan Singh government’s hopes of garnering at least a semblance of support for the controversial United States-India nuclear cooperation deal from elected political representatives outside the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) have crashed.

At the conclusion of a debate this week on the deal in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of Parliament on Wednesday, it becomes abundantly clear that the UPA, led by the Congress party, remains isolated on the issue.

The government will now pilot negotiations on the agreement through the International Atomic Energy Agency without being able to claim a broad-based domestic consensus on it.

This might weaken New Delhi’s ability to complete the deal on its terms at the IAEA, and later, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), which strictly regulates global civilian nuclear commerce and prohibits transactions with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For the moment, the government is going ahead with talks with the IAEA for a special inspections (safeguards) agreement, which includes the creation of a long-term fuel reserve for civilian reactors.

However, the outcome of the Parliament debate is a major setback for the government in relation to the situation in mid-November.

Then, the Left parties, whose support the UPA needs in Parliament for survival, toned down their total and categorical opposition to any further steps in completing the deal after the signature last July of a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and India, called “the 123 agreement” (because it refers to Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1974).

In a meeting of a 15-member joint committee of UPA and Left leaders on the deal, the Left allowed the government to approach the IAEA for talks.

“Although this was on condition that the government would not sign any agreement with the IAEA before placing it for approval in the joint committee, the move clearly signalled a softening of the Left’s original stance,” says Achin Vanaik, professor of international relations and global politics at Delhi University.

The Left parties, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), are widely believed to have changed their stance under the pressure of the party’s West Bengal unit, which leads the state government there.

The CPM in West Bengal is embroiled in a major controversy over the forcible acquisition of agricultural land for an industrial project, at Nandigram, some 160 km from Kolkata.

Resistance to land acquisition, leading to intense political conflict between the CPM and its rivals, brought on heavy armed attacks on local villagers by the police or the party’s cadres twice, causing 14 deaths in firings in March, and at least six more killings a month ago.

Tension still persists in Nandigram, where the police have just exhumed a grave containing the remains of people believed to have gone missing in the recent violence.

“The Nandigram violence has tarnished the image of the Left and made the West Bengal government politically vulnerable,” adds Vanaik. “As a result, the Left is reluctant to take on the UPA and cause a fall of its government, which would precipitate mid-term elections, in which the Left parties are likely to do worse than in 2004.”

The Left’s toned-down opposition to the deal influenced the direction of the debate in the Lok Sabha (law-making Lower House) last week.

A grouping of regional parties called the United National Progressive Alliance took a somewhat ambivalent stand on the nuclear agreement. Some of their legislators did not condemn the deal outright and instead sought assurances from the government that it would safeguard the national interest.

The government’s representatives, especially Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, delivered a spirited reply to the deal’s critics on Nov. 29. They also put a spin on the Lok Sabha debate to suggest that the opposition was more fragmented than appeared.

However, the debate in the Rajya Sabha has brought to light growing polarisation of political opinion on the nuclear deal and emphasised the UPA’s isolation.

It is now apparent that parties which represent upwards of 60 percent of Parliament’s oppose the deal. Their grounds for opposing it differ widely. But the government cannot even remotely claim a consensus in favour of the deal.

As CPM general secretary Prakash Karat puts it, “The opposition to the deal was expressed mainly in three forms.” First, many MPs, especially from Left and Centrist parties, argued that the 123 agreement does not meet the assurances given to Parliament in August 2006 by Prime Minister Singh, and hence there must be no further talks to complete the deal.

Second, some MPs, especially of the right-wing, nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, demanded a renegotiation of the deal. And third, some parties held that the deal should go forward only after all doubts about it are cleared and a consensus achieved, preferably through a joint Parliamentary committee.

A common theme in the criticism of the deal is that it compromises India’s strategic interests by taking away the “right:” to conduct nuclear tests or build a large nuclear arsenal. But experts hold that the deal will allow India to make more nuclear fuel and amass more nuclear weapons.

“Regrettably, the Parliamentary debate was less a discussion of the deal’s merits and demerits than a contest over who is more nationalistic, the government or the opposition,” says M.V. Ramana, a nuclear affairs analyst based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development in Bangalore.

“It was also a bit of a charade,” adds Ramana, “because the debate doesn’t bind the government in any way. Parliament is not required to vote on an international treaty or the 123 or any other agreement with a foreign government. The government can do what it likes so far as negotiating the deal’s completion is concerned.”

Right now, the government’s calculation seems to be that it must make the most of the chance it has been given by the communist parties to conduct negotiations with the IAEA on an India-specific safeguards agreement.

Once these are successfully completed, the U.S. would approach the NSG with a request to give India an unconditional waiver from its nuclear commerce rules. The deal would then be sent for ratification to the U.S. Congress before presidential election primaries are held and President George W. Bush becomes politically irrelevant.

The only possible hitch is that the Left may pull the rug from under the UPA’s feet if it signs an agreement with the IAEA in the face of objections in the joint committee.

But this would be a function of many domestic political factors, including the Congress party’s performance in the state assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh due later this month, and not least, developments pertaining to Nandigram.

If the Congress does well in Gujarat, it may call a national mid-term election without waiting for the Left’s response to talks with the IAEA.

If the UPA emerges politically weaker in the next few weeks, the Left might still be able to stop further talks. As of now, this seems a slim possibility.

Meanwhile, there is some uncertainty over the inclusion of a fuel reserve in the safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

“The U.S. and IAEA director-general Mohamed El-Baradei, who are both for the deal, might be able to swing a good bargain for India on this,” argues Ramana. “But negotiations in the NSG are likely to be far more difficult.”

Several members of the NSG are known to have reservations about the deal, in particular its effect in further weakening the global nuclear order and the non-proliferation norm.

Whether they stand up to U.S. pressure and resist the temptation to make special exceptions for “emerging superpower” India remains to be seen.