Indo-US Nuclear Deal

It's loaded in
US favour : Jaswant Singh
From Our Correspondent

“Will India thereby have to forsake all nuclear testing for good? Does the US have any such corresponding obligation with us? Further, does this not amount to capping our programme ? And does it also not cripple all our future scientific developments in the nuclear field?”

BJP has expressed grave concern over the contents of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and to the House International Relations Committee on the nuclear agreement with India. Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Shri Jaswant Singh, on April 21 asked the Manmohan Singh Government to come clean on the subject.

Describing the deal as “very costly, ill-assessed and an imbalanced one”, Shri Jaswant Singh contended that the agreement, designed by the UPA Government and its allies, “is not in agreement with our national interests”.

The former External Affairs Minister alleged, “What the government has offered to the US results in a significant erosion of our strategic space; an abandoning of our autonomy of action; placing 90 percent of our nuclear plants on surveillance by an intrusive IAEA regime; and all this for just 8 percent of our energy requirements of around 2025, which, too, will become operational (in about 15-20 years) only if all goes well.”

Armed with the deliberations in the two committees, as also the replies to the ‘82 Questions for the Record’ sent by Senator Richard Lugar to the Bush administration, Shri Jaswant Singh expressed serious doubts about the proposed agreement.

Senior BJP leader asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to clarify on India’s entry into the Nuclear Weapons’ State (NWS) club. Secretary of State Rice, in her testimony, said that “this initiative with India does not seek to renegotiate or amend the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India is not, and is not going to become a member of the NPT as a NWS”.

As India cannot be a NWS without subscribing to the NPT, and if it is not a NWS, then India can simply not have “the same benefits and advantages as the US has”, he said quoting Ms Rice.

Shri Jaswant Singh sought to know whether the government had unilaterally agreed to the NSG criteria and obligations. “Also, does the government agree that energy and non-proliferation are two conjoined halves, as argued by the US Secretary of State,” he asked, positioning this in the context of repeated assertions by the Prime Minister and the foreign secretary that this agreement was about energy, and not about arms-control or non-proliferation.

The BJP veteran maintained that the country also has a right to know whether the Government had given its consent, or was going to “unilaterally” subscribe to obligations such as the FMC (implying a nuclear fuel cap), or the MTCR (which means curbs on missile development). He feared that, against the backdrop of India’s decision to abide by the July 18 statement, the Government had accepted CTBT in disguise.

“Will India thereby have to forsake all nuclear testing for good ? Does the US have any such corresponding obligation with us? Further, does this not amount to capping our programme ? And does it also not cripple all our future scientific developments in the nuclear field?” Shri Singh asked.