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U.S./INDIA: Nuke Deal Opponents Focus on U.S. Congress

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 2008 (IPS) - The Democratic-led U.S. Congress is coming under heavy pressure from environmental and arms control lobbyists to reject the White House’s move to sell U.S. nuclear technologies to India.

“The Bush administration’s proposal undermines over 30 years of nonproliferation policy,” said John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control research organisation. “It’s dangerous and unprecedented.”

Issacs’s group is part of a new coalition comprising more than 20 prominent environmental organisations and policy think tanks, which is currently involved in intense lobbying efforts against the George W. Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India. The agreement would give India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and equipment in exchange for New Delhi’s agreement to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.

For the agreement to be completed, it must also be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and must receive unconditional exemption from the rules for nuclear commerce set by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.

Members of the coalition’s Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade describe the proposed agreement with India as “detrimental” because it could provoke others in the region to start or expand nuclear weapons programmes.

Issacs thinks that it will not only increase India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, but will also send the wrong message to Pakistan in a time of crisis in that country.

David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which is also part of the coalition, agrees. “[This] deal will worsen nuclear dangers by undermining the nuclear nonproliferation regime, increasing India’s nuclear weapons capacity, provoking Pakistan and possibly China,” he told IPS.

Krieger thinks that the deal would set “a terrible precedent by providing nuclear benefits to a country that has never joined the nonproliferation treaty and has developed a significant nuclear arsenal.”

Both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed countries that have gone to war with each other three times since they gained independence in 1947.

The proposed deal, according to the coalition, would destabilise South Asia and weaken international and U.S. laws, including the Hyde Act, which Congress passed in 2006 to provide a framework for nuclear cooperation with India.

The proposed agreement with India over the supply of nuclear technology was first announced by senior U.S. officials in August 2007 after New Delhi assured the Bush administration that it would use the imported technology for civilian, not military purposes.

But critics of the accord say it’s hard for them to believe that India, which possesses a significant number of nuclear warheads, would live up to its promise.

“[It] may promote not only a possible arms race between India and Pakistan, but also [between] India and China, as well,” John Boroughs of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Nuclear Policy told IPS.

Some experts see the Bush administration move as a clear divergence from international opinion on India’s status as a nuclear armed nation. A U.N. Security Council resolution requires that no country export “equipment, materials, or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons.”

The 1998 resolution was adopted by consensus soon after both India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices in defiance of international opinion against the spread of nuclear weapons.

Currently, India has 14 nuclear energy reactors in commercial operation and nine under construction. According to the Uranium Resource Centre, the country’s nuclear power supplies account for about 3 percent of total electricity production.

For its part, India strongly denies that it intends to use the deal with the United States to expand its nuclear weapons programme.

“We are not using it as an excuse to enhance our strategic capabilities,” said M.K. Narayan, India’s national security adviser, in a statement last August. But his comments failed to satisfy critics because the deal, as it has been interpreted by Indian officials, does not cover the question of whether India has a right to carry out further nuclear tests.

Sceptics see the U.S. acceptance of India’s nuclear weapons programme as a major concession because New Delhi has never agreed to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). In addition to India, nuclear-armed Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are also the lone holdouts from that 1970 agreement, which commits non-nuclear-armed countries to staying that way

This shows that nuclear “double standards are alive and well,” said Krieger. “Iraq was viciously attacked and its regime overthrown on the false representation that it had a nuclear weapons programme. Iran was threatened for enriching uranium, which it is allowed to do under international law, and North Korea has been threatened and bullied.”

Krieger described the Bush administration’s position on the deal as “reprehensible and arrogant behaviour,” saying that, “India, a known nuclear proliferator, is being rewarded for what the U.S. government sees as geopolitical advantage.”

Supporters argue that the deal will greatly strengthen the U.S. strategic position in Asia. In a memo last August titled “U.S. Nuclear Agreement with India: An Acceptable Deal for Major Strategic Gain,” Lisa Curtis and Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argued that the proposed agreement would solidify “a partnership with a one-billion-strong, economically booming democracy bordering another and less predictable rising power: China.”

The Bush administration justifies its position by backing India’s assertion that it will only use the technology transferred from Washington for “peaceful” nuclear purposes and that it will enhance efforts for greater use of clean energy.

“India will be able to tap into clean nuclear power and make it more energy independent,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns in a statement last August.

But many critics who support policy initiatives for increased reliance on clean energy refuse to accept the notion that nuclear energy is a safe alternative.

“It is perhaps the least talked about and most worrying irony of our time,” said Krieger. “The United States has a massive defence budget, but spends relatively little addressing the most immediate danger to humanity.”

In the past two years, environmentalists and some leading politicians from across the world have raised concerns about the U.N. and U.S. projections for nuclear technology as an alternative to fossil fuels.

“Nuclear power is no longer necessary,” former European environment ministers said in a letter to the U.N. secretary-general in June 2006. “We have now numerous renewable technologies available to guarantee the right to safe, clean, and cheap energy.”

But this line of reasoning has so far failed to convince the power establishments in the industrialised countries, many of whom rely heavily on fossil fuels and nuclear technology to meet growing energy needs.

The members of the new coalition appear to have mixed feelings about whether their campaign can sway Congress, although many leading Democratic lawmakers appear to be on their side regarding to concerns about environmental issues.

“Hopefully, some member(s) of the Nuclear Suppliers Group will have the courage to say ‘no’ to this deal on principle and will block it from happening,” said Krieger, referring to the informal 45-country body that sets guidelines for nuclear exports.

“I don’t think that the U.S. Congress can be counted on to do the right thing,” he added.