The News, December 19, 2005
Taking forward the Indo-US nuclear deal
Jyoti Malhotra
America is back on the Indian radar this week, despite the north Indian obsession with Pakistan which allows public opinion to stray westward from time to time. And so, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran is winding his way to Washington DC for talks with his counterpart, Nicholas Burns — and a "drop in" on the most powerful woman in the world, as well as certainly amongst the most interesting, Condoleezza Rice — for talks on how to take the Indo-US nuclear deal forward.
The world would do well to keep a close eye on the peripatetic Saran. He was in Nepal last week, during which time he said hello to King Gyanendra and to the major Nepalese political figures — even as the Nepalese army chief was at the exact same time shaking hands with Pakistan’s very influential generals in Islamabad. He goes forth from his office in South Block to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament almost every other day these days, a two-km stretch that is definitely the most influential piece of real estate in this country. And now he’s going to the US.
The American trip is all about taking forward the nuclear deal signed on July 18 between India and the US during Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington, in which the US committed to the start of a civilian nuclear relationship with India.
Admittedly, that was quite a coup for the Congress government, because any strategic analyst worth his/her salt would tell you that the way the P-5 have fixed the world’s nuclear architecture, no country in the world (except one belonging to the P-5, of course) can get nuclear fuel to run its civilian nuclear plants if you haven’t signed the NPT. Of the three countries that haven’t (India, Pakistan and Israel), India is the only country with which the US has started such a relationship. And despite the Pakistani clamour in recent months demanding the same thing, Washington has quite firmly said no.
Neither does it take a rocket scientist to tell you that this deal puts India in a very special category. And so, Shyam Saran & Co. are in DC this week to structure its many explicit and implicit elements. The major implicit element is that America, the most powerful country in the world, now recognises India as a nuclear-weapons power. Because, you see, trade in nuclear energy is either restricted to the P-5 or to countries which have signed the NPT. India, so far, is neither.
Common sense would dictate that to be able to get this nuclear fuel, and thereby produce nuclear energy, India would need to bifurcate its nuclear programme. Meaning, the outside world will only sell nuclear fuel to India if India guarantees that this fuel will be used for civilian purposes only — that is, for the production of nuclear energy and not for military uses, such as the manufacture of a nuclear bomb. Therefore, India must provide a plan for separating its civilian reactors from its military ones. (Right now they are integrated.)
So when Saran meets Burns in DC, he will give him a plan or a roadmap for separating its nuclear programme. Is the Kalpakkam complex going to be in or out? What about Kaiga? Or Narora? India has a host of reactors at this moment, which variously reprocess plutonium (the stuff that makes a bomb), multiply it and enrich uranium, and include research facilities as well as produce nuclear energy. (Many of these are not under international safeguards, although a few, like the ones at Tarapur in Mumbai and the set being built by the Russians in Kudamkulam in Tamil Nadu, are.)
In turn, Burns will give him some idea of how the US intends to take this forward. George Bush promised Manmohan Singh in July that he would get Congress to pass legislation to this effect. So, after the Indians present their plan, the US will pass the law allowing the trade of nuclear energy with India. After which, the US will persuade the Nuclear Suppliers Group to modify their own restrictions. The final step in this bilaterally-agreed-upon sequence is that India will, after the US law is passed, implement its plan for separation.
The hullabaloo in recent weeks about "India having sold out to the US" or "India being dictated to by the US" amounts to the last embers of an old world order (read, reflexively anti-American) that is possibly enjoying its last stand at home. The point to be noted is that none other than Anil Kakodkar, the chief of India’s atomic energy programme at the moment, was on PM Manmohan Singh’s plane in July. And he was the one who agreed with every word of the statement that was signed.
Interestingly, a sign of India’s political maturity is its increasing engagement with the US, on the one hand, and a continuing criticism of its role in Iraq, on the other. In fact, many Indians would argue that a weakened America — and Bush’s own admission that 30,000 Iraqis have been killed by coalition forces since the invasion of Iraq only underlines this point – is in India’s interest.
Engaging with a defanged America, but one that is still powerful enough to influence world events (especially in South Asia), is the pragmatic thing to do. Surely, a lone superpower is too much trouble and therefore in nobody’s interest. And so, when China begins to regularly nudge the Americans, the rest of the stupefied world stands and watches. The Europeans embark upon the "bra wars" – and lose. Pakistan pushes for a relationship that is "higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans," which in simple English means, intensive linkages on everything from Gwadar to the Karakoram, via Chaghai. India, meanwhile, jumps up its trade with Beijing.
In the middle of this international whirligig, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran goes to America this week. Let the fun and games begin.
The writer is diplomatic editor of Star News, India
No comments:
Post a Comment