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Nuclear deal with the US : Tough job to sell 123 at home

	July 30, 2007

While the Manmohan Singh Government has at long last been able to reach an agreement with the United States on the text of the 123 civil nuclear cooperation deal, a tough job awaits the Prime Minister to sell it to the Left parties, supporting the Government from outside, and the opposition BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The Government claims that the 123 agree¬ment is the best that could be achieved in the circumstances and addresses most of India’s core concerns. It has also got approval of the deal from the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, who earlier had misgivings about its implications for the country’s strategic concerns and the three-stage nuclear programme.



Both the BJP and the Left have refused to accept the Gover¬nment’s claims on face value and said that they would like to study the fine print of the full text of the agreement and con¬sult the scientific community before coming out with their con¬sidered response. However, one hopeful sign for the Government is that the Left has surprisingly refrained from its familiar anti-US and anti-UPA rhetoric on the Indo-US nuclear agreement and is adopting a wait-and-watch approach.



The Left had earlier said that India should not go ahead with the 123 agreement unless the United States changed some provisions of the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress. A state¬ment issued by the CPI(M) politburo on July 22 said, “the CPI(M) has already stated that an agreement on civilian nuclear cooper¬ation with the United States can be based only on the assurances given by the Prime Minister on August 17 last year in Parliament and by not accepting those provisions of the Hyde Act which are contrary to India’s interests.” CPI national secretary D. Raja said that the Government should take Parliament into confidence on details of the deal.





Government holds talks with Left, BJP



With the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs and the Cabinet Committee on Security approving the text of the 123 deal, the Government has got busy with briefing the Left and the Oppo¬sition on what it has achieved on the issue so that they would accept the agreement when it is placed in Parliament at the start of its Monsoon Session. And the canvassing is going on at the highest level.



On Wednesday, July 25, the Prime Minister and members of India’s negotiating team on the deal briefed representatives of the Left parties, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and politburo member Sitaram Yechury and CPI leaders A.B. Bardhan and D. Raja on the salient features of the deal and how it meets India’s concerns. The meeting took place at the Prime Minis¬ter’s residence. Karat said later the Left has reserved its opinion on the draft 123 agreement that will operationalise civilian nuclear cooperation between India and the United States. He said, “They briefed us and we told them that till the full text comes, we cannot say anything.” He said that the text of the 123 agreement had not been shared with them yet.



CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said the Government has assured the Left parties that the text of the 123 agreement will be released on August 2. The matter is expected to come up in Parliament on August 13. The Monsoon session of Parliament begins on August 10.



Bardhan said, “According to them whatever was contained in the July 18, 2005 India-US Joint Statement and also the March 2, 2006 Separation Plan and what discussion took place in Parliament and the nine points which were there, according to them these have been fulfilled.



“Only when we have gone through the entire text which con¬sists of about 16 or 17 articles and we have gone through the entire fineprint of that text that we will be able to say what our views are”, he said. “Let us first understand the meaning of the articles and their significance.” Only when we understand and talk to the scientific community can we say whether we are satisfied or not,” he added.



He further said, “It was also agreed that we will meet again after August 2.”



External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, National Securi¬ty Adviser M.K. Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar were present at the meeting.





No comment on nuclear deal, but negotiators did superb job : BJP



The next day, i.e. Thursday, July 26, the Prime Minister and other Government leaders met senior leaders of the National Democratic Alliance on the deal. After National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon outlined the salient features, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee explained the political rationale. On the NDA side, former Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra did most of the talking. Later, BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media that the party would be able to give a ‘structured response’ only after the text of the agreement was available in the public domain.



Informed sources said the questions raised by the NDA were general in nature and had to do with the traditional distrust of the Americans. One of the NDA members wanted to know what was there to prevent Washington from squeezing New Delhi after mas¬sive investments were made on nuclear reactors. The Prime Minis¬ter’s answer was that it was an inherent risk in every single international trade transaction.



While for the record, the BJP reserved its comments on the 123 deal, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh signalled a thaw on the issue complimenting negotiators for what he called a”superb job” in clinching the path-breaking agreement.



The tone, sources said, was set when before the UPA briefing for the BJP began, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh walked out of his official residence at the RCR complex to welcome former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee with the words: “I have completed what you began.”



He was referring to Vajpayee’s efforts to end India’s nu¬clear apartheid by offering the separation of civilian and nu¬clear reactors as early as 2002.



This was one of the rare occasions when the ruling UPA combine has reached out to the main Opposition party. Prominent among those who attended the briefing were Jaswant Singh, Yashw¬ant Sinha, Rajnath Singh, Arun Shourie and former National Secur¬ity Advisor Brajesh Mishra. Opposition leader L K Advani did not attend as he was away from New Delhi.



“The text of the agreement is clearly frozen. Neither India nor the US can now make any changes in it. But they (Government) have not shared with us the text of the agreement. They tried to share only the main elements of the agreement,” BJP leader Yashw¬ant Sinha said after the meeting. “They were trying to assure us that the agreement would have no impact on our weapons programme and the three-stage nuclear programme and that all our concerns about the reprocessing of fuel have been taken care of,” Sinha said.



Significantly, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon briefed Mishra on the agreement on Tuesday itself.



Earlier, senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi said “if an agreement is reached, that accommodates the Indian position within the US domestic law, it would be human ingenuity and I am waiting to see that.”





CWC endorses agreement



On Saturday, July 28, the Congress Working Committee en¬dorsed the nuclear deal after the Prime Minister explained its salient features. Dr. Manmohan Singh assured CWC members that India’s strategic interests have been protected in the deal.









In his hour-long briefing to the members at party chief Sonia Gandhi’s residence, Dr. Singh gave the background of the 123 Agreement and how it was finalised. He said, it took time because there were reservations on both sides but the deal was brokered “without compromising our strategic interests”. It was purely a “civil nuclear co-operation agreement”, not a military programme, he said



In finalising the agreement, the Prime Minister said he had stood by his commitments made in Parliament on August 17, 2006. He had then declared that India’s nuclear programme, civil and military, could not and would not be subject to intrusive US scrutiny.



The text of the agreement was not circulated but Singh said it would be discussed at length in Parliament. There were three queries by CWC members on whether India had given up its right to nuclear tests. The PM said nuclear tests were not mentioned in the deal.







123 text in accordance with Prime Minister’s assurances



Sources in New Delhi say that the draft agreement negotiated by India and the United States fulfils all the assurances Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave Parliament in August last year.



It is learnt that the agreement grants India “prior consent” to reprocess spent fuel produced by US-supplied equipment and fuel, a key requirement for the Indian side. The specific ar¬rangements will be worked out subsequently.



The agreement reiterates the fuel-supply assurances provided in the March 2006 separation plan and commits the U.S. to the “continuous operation” of any reactor it sells to India. Offi¬cials also say the irksome issue of fall back safeguards and the ‘right of return’ - as mandated by the U.S. Atomic Energy Act - of American-supplied material in the event of cessation of coop¬eration have also been satisfactorily resolved.



Moreover, 123 includes a specific clause that the purpose of the agreement is not to hinder anything India does with its strategic programme or to affect unsafeguarded or military nu¬clear facilities.



According to sources, any reprocessing of US-origin spent fuel will be done in a dedicated national facility under Interna¬tional Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Though India has been granted prior consent, the specific arrangements have not been spelt out and would require further consultations.



The parameters for these arrangements relate exclusively to IAEA requirements for storage of spent fuel, safeguards, and physical protection. This linkage has been explicitly spelt out and there is no room for ambiguity, say officials. “There will be no repeat of the Tarapur experience,” said an official.



In the event of the cessation of cooperation by the U.S. presumably in response to an Indian nuclear test, the draft agreement still gives Washington the right to demand the return of equipment, material and fuel it has supplied. However, the exercise of this right has been qualified by a U.S. commitment to ensure the continuous operation of reactors supplied by it and will leave India free to arrange appropriate fuel supplies from other sources.



On fall back safeguards, another key demand of the U.S. side, the 123 agreement says that in the event that the “IAEA determines that safeguards are no longer being applied” on U.S.-supplied material, India and the U.S. must consult with each other and agree on an appropriate verification mechanism.



The one issue on which the U.S. side would not budge, citing legal and policy restraints, was the inclusion of reprocessing and enrichment technology and components. The 123 agreement states that fuel cycle-related equipment can only be transferred pursuant to an amendment to the agreement.



In terms of sequencing, officials said the next step was the negotiation of India-specific safeguards with the IAEA and then the NSG agreeing to change its guidelines. The U.S. and India hope to conclude these steps by October, paving the way for an ‘up-down’ vote by the U.S. Congress later this year.