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US House nod for nuke bill : An unequal accord |
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Harjit Singh
The controversial Indo-US nuclear deal has crossed the second major hurdle with the US House of Representatives approving the legislation with more than three-fourths of support, reflecting the bipartisan consensus in the US Congress in its favour. The next stage is for the Senate to repeat the exercise. But, as a result of radical changes made in the bill, it appears Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will face a Herculean task in making it acceptable to his opponents in Parliament.
As compared to President. Bush, Dr. Manmohan Singh is finding it more difficult to make the Opposition give its nod to the agreement. Leading the bandwagon is the Left Front which is accusing the US of shifting the goal posts and Dr. Manmohan Singh of conniving with Washington. Denials and explanations by Dr. Singh have not assuaged their feelings. Even the statement by Dr. Singh in both Houses of Parliament to mollify the Opposition and the Left that he would not accept anything beyond what has been agreed in the July 2005 joint statement could satisfy them. There is weight in the Left argument that if in the US, the nuclear agreement cannot be enforced without the approval of both Houses and it is discussed threadbare in the key foreign relations committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives, why should it not be approved by Parliament in India also. What to speak of submitting it for parliamentary approval, the Manmohan Singh Government is not ready for a resolution to be passed by Parliament setting the parameters of India’s nuclear policy and setting out the guidelines for future Governments. Observing that a resolution incorporating “sense of Parliament” was essential, the CPI[M] leader, Prakash Karat has said, the changes and amendments in the original July 2005 understanding by the US law makers have altered the deal so much that it will keep Indian foreign policy and its future nuclear programme hostage to the US and impose a host of discriminatory restrictions on the Indian nuclear programme. Karat alleged that the deal’s provisions are being systematically eroded in negotiations and in the legislation in the US.
Karat is right when one goes through the developments in the intervening period between the signing of the joint statement on July 18, 2005 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington and now when the US House of Representatives voted on the Bill. The July 2005 joint statement was supposed to be a tightly crafted bilateral statement, containing reciprocal obligations on the two States in order to “fulfill civil nuclear cooperation.” The Prime Minister went to town claiming victory and saying the obligations by India would be similar to those made by the five nuclear powers to the IAEA. But, hardly had the ink dried on the joint statement that the US began to demand that any separation plan by India will have to be such that it is acceptable to Washington. The US also made it clear that the safeguards India will be negotiating with the IAEA would have to apply “in perpetuity” unlike the case of the declared nuclear powers who can voluntarily withdraw from the obligation. The US House of Representatives Bill binds the President to submit periodic reports to Congress every year on India’s nuclear-related activities whose objective is to achieve a moratorium on production of fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes by India, Pakistan and China; adherence to the FMCT and India’s full participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative. The US has also gone back on the reciprocity of it passing the Bill in Congress in tandem with India negotiating the safeguards with the IAEA which have already begun. In the meantime, many new demands in the form of amendments have been made in the two key committees as well as in the US Congress which would completely change the complexion of the original document. The deal will virtually lead India to NPT through the backdoor, cap its weapons potential and reduce the country to a perpetual secondary status. All this places India at a disadvantageous position vis a vis the US. All pretensions about a mutually beneficial nuclear deal have faded away. Gone is the hope that the deal will herald India’s accommodation in the US-led Non-Proliferation regime. The US has secured its own strategic interests even as it tried to discipline India in a way that it can never repeat a nuclear test as it did twice in the past.
Seen in the light of the news reports that Pakistan is now building a 1000 MW nuclear reactor which will enable it to make 50 nuclear bombs annually, one wonders if India has been maneouvered into the agreement to put it at a disadvantage in the nuclear race with Pakistan whose acts of commission and omission have been ignored by the United States in order to keep it on its side in the so-called war on terror.
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