This is by far the best deal we could have got

The Indo-US nuclear deal, with its attendant ‘123 Agreement’, the India-specific International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and Nuclear Suppliers Group waivers, need to be seen as building blocks of an extended process through which India is being brought into the mainstream of global politics.
Critics of the agreement have parsed every full-stop, comma and preposition to delineate its faults. They have sought to play up fears and put forward worst-case scenarios to undermine the agreement. In the coming years, as India intensifies its nuclear power programme in a big way, there will be many occasions when there will be differences of opinion on various clauses and agreements.
But let’s be clear that if the US has its interpretation of the 123 Agreement or the NSG waiver, so will India. More important, US generosity and Indian diplomatic tenacity has ensured that we have got as much of a level playing field as could have been provided for an outlaw country in the nuclear arena. From now onwards, its future will be shaped not by the fears of its critics but the practical use we make of the opportunities it provides.

Agreement

What does the agreement do? First, and most immediately, it will allow India to import natural uranium fuel to run our existing and planned nuclear power plants at full capacity. Second, it will allow us to resume collaboration with Canada to upgrade the CANDU design on which most Indian reactors are based. The Indian reactors are typically 220, or now 540 MW, while Canada has developed 740 MW reactors and has a 1,000 MW unit on the drawing board. Third, India can import modern units from France, Russia or the US, along with financing to set them up.
Fourth, Indian engineers and researchers will be permitted to work or collaborate with their counterparts in advanced nuclear nations without any special restrictions. Fifth, it provides India’s own industry such as Larsen & Toubro or the NPCIL the opportunity to become suppliers of key reactor items or even reactors. Sixth, it will enable India to acquire hitherto forbidden dual use technology which is critical for our ambitious space and high-tech industry programmes.
In the US, critics like Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association have claimed that US-supplied uranium fuel would free up India’s limited uranium reserves for use in its nuclear weapons programme. The views of these professional non-proliferation lobbyists were echoed on Wednesday in the US Senate by Senators Byron Dorgan and Jeff Bingaman. This claim flies against the face of facts. If India was interested in fabricating nuclear weapons it could have done so in the 1960s, to start with. Even after its single test explosion in 1974, it did nothing.
There were two reasons why it was compelled to change course. First, New Delhi got information of the extent to which China was assisting Pakistan in making nuclear weapons. This was a shocking development, because no country in the world had knowingly transferred nuclear weapons technology to another — not the US to UK or France, nor Russia to China. As a recent issue of Physics Today has disclosed, not only did China transfer a weapons design in 1982, but it also tested a weapon that had been made in Pakistan in its own test site in 1990.
Second, following the end of the Cold War and the scare over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, the US began to move in a concerted way to lock up India’s options. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — which acknowledges nuclear weapons possession only by five big powers — was extended “in perpetuity”. India was not affected as we are not signatories. But the second step was more compelling — the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was approved. This would ensure that India and other threshold powers would never be able to test their weapons.
Though we categorically rejected the treaty, it decreed that unless forty threshold countries, which included India, Pakistan, Israel, also signed and ratified it, it could not come into force. The pressure for ratification became intense as all significant countries signed up, though some key countries like the US and China did not ratify it.

Mirror

These pressures pushed India to test. The first attempt by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in December 1995 was foiled when the preparations were discovered, and the second came apart when Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-day government collapsed in 1996. The tests were eventually carried out in May of 1998, a quarter century after the Pokhran I test.
This was hardly the behaviour of a power bent on making nuclear weapons. In any case even today if India did want to make lots of nuclear weapons, it could simply take its 14-odd power reactors out of the electricity grid and use them in a “low burn-up” mode to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
There is a mirror-version of this critique in India. There are those who say that the agreement has taken away our right to test and that it will come in the way of constructing our nuclear arsenal. The test issue would be clear to anyone who has bothered to read the various documents associated with the deal — there is nothing in there which prevents India from testing. As for the weapons, the most knowledgeable authority — K. Santhanam of the DRDO who steered the programme to the tests at Pokhran II has made it clear in an article last year that India already has all the nuclear material it needs to construct a “credible minimum deterrent.” R. Chidambaram, the chief of the DAE at the time, too, stated last August that the tests met all the scientific community’s requirements for fabricating the arsenal that was needed.

Nuances

It doesn’t take much common sense to see that while we do have the sovereign right to test, there will be diplomatic consequences of the event. While countries like France and Russia may not react at all, the US will, though its position is not as absolute as it appears. On the face of it, the US is required to terminate cooperation and seek the return of its nuclear and non-nuclear material, technology or components.
Practically, however, Article 15(6) of the 123 Agreement would require the US party to compensate at “fair market value” of the equipment and pay for the costs of the removal. As Department of Atomic Energy Chairman, Anil Kakodkar has pointed out, “It is practically not possible [to remove reactor vaults, steam generators, coolant channels etc that make up a nuclear power station]. It is nuanced too by Article 14 which commits the US to consider the context of the termination. In other words, the US reaction would be graded if India resumed testing because of China or Pakistan
doing so.
There are bound to be geopolitical consequences of the agreement. The US has its reasons for what it has done, and India has its own for what it is doing. If there is congruence, well and good, if there isn’t well, the world will not end. But to assume that India is so beholden to the US that it will now be subservient to its interests is to be blind to contemporary reality in which India is the strongest economically and militarily that it has been in 60 years. As for the US, well it would be unfair to extrapolate from its present infirmities.
This article appeared in Mail Today October 3, 2008

Victory at NSG

At every stage opponents of the nuclear deal said it would not make it, be amended beyond recognition or simply fail to pass muster. But two people-- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W Bush-- insisted that a deal based on a joint statement they had made on July 18, 2005 would emerge.

It has, and it is set to shake not just the world, but Indian politics as well. Let me make one thing clear-- the agreement now confers on India a de facto status of a nuclear weapons state. We can never be de jure because the NPT condition is that we should have tested before 1967. Amending this, which seems to be what the BJP claims it wants to do, would require the strong support of over 120 countries in the world, a task that can be well deemed impossible. The point is, is it worth it ?

The second thing the deal does is to finally bury the policy of equating India and Pakistan in the South Asian region. For decades India has chafed at the world's tendency to adopt an equidistant approach towards the two South Asian neighbours. Now, decisively, the game has changed.

The third, and perhaps the most important outcome, is that this represents India's entry into the world order as a significant power. (I won't use loaded terms like "Great Power" .) As long as the nuclear embargoes remained on us, we were not quite the same as the others. We could boast of our bomb, our BPO prowess, our economic growth, our invites to the G-8 meetings and so on. But we were still at a level different from, let us say, China. They could import powerful computers, uranium, sensitive machine tools and components for satellites that were denied to us. Now, all these possibilities will open up.

The fourth point is that while some aspects of this entry (India's nuclear tests of 1998) are tantamount to a gate-crash, it is a friendly welcome. The opposition of Austria, Ireland, New Zealand is history. What is more significant is that countries ranging from Russia, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Germany, France, joined the US in welcoming India into the nuclear club. They have not done this because they love India, but because they recognise the role India has played in global politics till now, and the one it will play in the future is benign and will be beneficial to them individually.

The key role in this has been played by the United States. We need to understand why. There is nothing conspiratorial about it. India is good bet. In its own way the US has invested in us for decades, even when its main bets were on Pakistan. It was US assistance of the 1960s that enabled India's educational base which paid off in the 1990s. Why it is so important for the deal to go through now is that President George W Bush has invested as much political capital on this deal as he has on Iraq. That is a losing investment, but India will pay of.

Let us be very clear. No other country could have delivered the NSG to India other than the US. At the end of the day it was the US which had to kick the collective butts of the Irish, Austrians and the Norweigians. These rich, white, countries have zero dependence on nuclear power and are not nuclear exporters, and were yet trying to play spoiler. In some ways this is an object lesson in power politics. These countries were trying to punch far above their weight and they were clobbered.

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deserves the credit for single-handedly steering the complex agreement. For long stretches he was alone and had to face the lonliness of the long-distance runner. But his frail frame hides an iron will which has been manifest not just on this deal, but in India's efforts to restructure its economy in the 1990s. But Manmohan Singh's policies were not sui generis. He didn't dream them up. They represent the culmination of a strategic direction that was set by Indira Gandhi in 1980. She, if you recollect, is the one who put us on the path of making nuclear weapons as well.

We should also not forget the role played by Mohammed El Baradei, the head of the IAEA. His positive attitude towards the deal and his personal credibility as the chief of the anti-proliferation watch-dog, went a long way in shoring up support for India.

The last point I would like to make for now is that this deal also marks a major shift in India's domestic politics. Since the mid-1950s, the Congress party has had a left wing. This has comprised of crypto communists and real communists. It has been based on the party's belief that socialism is somehow the solution to India's ills.
By forcing the Congress to take a call on the deal, Prakash Karat and co have actually forced the Congress party to take a look at itself. The clarity with which Sonia, and more important, Rahul Gandhi have supported the deal indicates that the Congress is at last in the process of defining its post-Indiria ideology. This process was begun by Rajiv Gandhi, but was short-circuited by his assassination.

Running aground at the NSG

My simple view on the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Indo-US nuclear agreement: First, the entire agreement is premised on the NSG community accepting that India is a de facto, not de jure nuclear weapons state. In other words 1) India has not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and 2) that it has demonstrated that it possesses nuclear weapons and intends to retain them. The challenge for the NSG is to skirt these two issues in a manner that enables nuclear trade with India and also ensures that nothing in the process goes against their non-proliferation commitments. As of now they seem unable to do so.
You may say that India is demanding to have its cake and eat it too. Possibly, but that is what the so-called Nuclear Weapons States under the NPT do. India has stayed out of the NPT and has broken no international agreement in testing or possessing nuclear weapons. The 123 Agreement between India and the US has successfully dealt with the issue, as has the India-specific IAEA agreement by the simple device of working on the agreement in the narrow sense—dealing with nuclear trade issues rather than the larger question of nuclear weapons possession by India.
The NSG purists however want to get in through the backdoor what was kept out of the front.
For a more detailed analysis, you must see Siddharth Varadajan in The Hindu

India was saved by Pokhran nuclear tests

The United Progressive Alliance government did not celebrate the 10th anniversary of India’s Pokhran II nuclear tests. May I on behalf of the people of the country, then, raise two cheers for the occasion in this column? Only two, because testing weapons of mass destruction was a dreadful necessity, rather than an occasion for celebration. Just how necessary it was has become apparent in this past week when it has been revealed that Pakistan had by then — with the help of the Chinese — developed a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon, based on a proven Chinese design that was tested in 1966.

The subsidence crater at the site of the Taj Mahal shaft where India's tactical fission bomb was tested. The crater appears to be about 80 m across and 15 m deep.

Whether the National Democratic Alliance government had some secret information of this, or whether it was what it inferred from the test of the Ghauri missile on April 8, 1998, it is now clear that we had very little time to lose and fortunately we had a government that acted. Going by the reaction of the Congress and the Left at the time, and their behaviour since, you can be sure that had the UPA government been confronted with the situation today, it would have dithered, and its Left allies would have ensured that India did not become a nuclear weapons state.
Now the deed is done. India’s nuclear arsenal is nothing to write home about, and its missile programme moves at a glacial pace, but as far as deterrence goes, a couple of bombs and missiles are fine, and the political consensus for it is so strong that the Left cannot roll it back.

A.Q. Khan


The news that is of such significance came through a somewhat curious Abdul Qadeer Khan network source. In May, Swiss President Pascale Couchepin had announced that under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, his government had shredded thousands of documents relating to construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems which were linked to the AQ Khan network’s Swiss connection. The network was exposed in 2003 and Khan was put under house arrest in Islamabad in early 2004.
But last month, taking advantage of Musharraf’s eclipse and the ongoing political turmoil in Pakistan, he was released and began speaking to the media about how he had been wrongfully confined and that the western parties were themselves guilty of what he had been charged with. In retaliation, as it were, news leaks in the US alerted us to an even more curious point: The documents shredded contained detailed digitised drawings of sophisticated nuclear weapons which were of the type tested by Pakistan in 1998. In other words, Pakistan was actually selling its nuclear weapons design to third countries.
Pokhran II was therefore important from the Indian point of view because while Pakistan had had access to a tried and tested Chinese nuclear weapon design, all that Indian designers had to go by was a single nuclear explosive test of 1974. The test was also important because it signified that India had taken abundant precautions against the Pakistani and Chinese tendency towards irresponsible, and even reckless, behaviour. China’s use of missiles in the Taiwan straits crisis of 1996 is one case in point. Another is the planning of the 1999 Kargil venture with full knowledge of the fact that it could lead to a nuclear war. But the extent of the recklessness became apparent only after the Khan network was unraveled in 2004.
The network was created in the 1970s to acquire enrichment technology from across the world by its founder A.Q. Khan, who had stolen the design from the company he had worked for in the Netherlands. In the 1980s, Khan began to use this network which had an elaborate chain of suppliers and shipping agents in Europe, South Africa, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. It then transpired that even while offering complete drawings and components for gas centrifuges, Khan was also offering the design of a nuclear weapon.
In the early 1980s, US intelligence had got information that China had transferred nuclear materials and a nuclear weapon design to Pakistan. The latter was of a proven Chinese warhead tested in 1966. This information was confirmed after a ship carrying equipment for a centrifuge for Libya was detained in October 2003. As a result of this the country came clean and admitted to its clandestine activities and turned over all the material and documentation to the IAEA. US intelligence which whisked away some of the key documents were in for a shock when they discovered the blueprints of a nuclear bomb in a plastic shop bag of the tailor Khan patronised in Islamabad. The bomb was the one tested by the Chinese in 1966 and the documents included detailed, dated handwritten notes in English taken during lectures given by Chinese weapons experts who were named by the note-takers — obviously Pakistani nuclear scientists — and some of the annotation was in Chinese.

Network

As part of the investigations in 2004, Swiss investigators seized computer files and documents from three of its nationals — Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Marco and Urs. They contained over 1,000 megabytes of information which were encrypted. After considerable difficulty, the Swiss decrypted the information. Though they realised that it related to nuclear weapons, they lacked the expertise to assess its importance and so called the IAEA and the US for help. The IAEA which had been involved in the investigation of the Khan network soon realised that they were the design of the nuclear weapon that had been tested by Pakistan in 1998. It was a compact version of the 1966 design and far more sophisticated because of the electronics. The 1966 design could fit a DF-2 kind of a missile, much heavier than anything Pakistan has. Since the heaviest Pakistani missile at the time was the Ghauri, acquired from the North Koreans by the Khan network, a new design was necessary. This used less uranium, but had a greater explosive force. This design, according to sources cited by The New York Times, could also fit missiles like the Iranian Shahab. Alarmingly, the bomb data was in digitised form, complete with information coded for manufacturing components on an industrial scale.

Pathology

This brings us to the ruckus over Mr. L.K. Advani’s participation in a function to release a book on Benazir Bhutto. The book merely repeats well known truths about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. You can question Shyam Bhatia on the need to put out some revelations of Benazir’s personal life, but his revelation that she carried nuclear weapons data in CDs in her pocket fits in well with the fact that the Swiss files were digitised and thus available for storage in such media. Benazir’s autobiography acknowledges that she did play a crucial role in acquiring missile technology from North Korea, though she insists that the deal was against cash.
Perhaps Benazir was trying to prove that she was one of the boys when it came to Pakistan’s security interests. Or that Pakistan’s insecurity with regard to India is so intense that everyone from politician to general is ready to go that extra mile. But it does provide us with the dangerous pathology of a country that is second only to the People’s Republic of China when it comes to proliferating nuclear weapons technology.
Only the future can tell us about the true implications of Khan’s activities for the future security of the country and the region. In the meantime we should be grateful that Pokhran II has at least provided us a shield of sorts.
This article first appeared in Mail Today June 19, 2008

Endgame hurdles dog the Indo-US nuclear deal

THE END game has gone on for so long, that one would be tempted to say that it has become a game of its own. That there is still some life in the Indo- US nuclear deal was apparent by the buzz created last week, when the Samajwadi party cited former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s advocacy of the deal, to say they were willing to reconsider their opposition to it. Given its single- issue approach to politics, which does not include an automatic distaste for things American, the change signifies little for the party, but it has larger implications for national politics.
Among other things, it weakens the CPI( M) General Secretary Prakash Karat’s claim — untested on the floor of the house — that the majority of the Parliament is against the deal. With 36 seats in the present house, the SP has nearly as many members of parliament as the CPI( M) itself. The Left is now reported to be readying to have yet another internal discussion on the deal. The Samajwadi shift could be used by them to modify their senseless blockade, though this is unlikely. The UPA- Left coordination committee meeting on May 28 could well be the final meeting on the deal. Optimists, and I am one of naïve lot, believe that the deal will still go through the Indian political hurdles. But that will only be the first of three endgames. The next will be with the International Atomic Energy Agency whose board of governors will meet on June 2. While India has a draft agreement with the IAEA in its pocket, that does not mean that the board of governors will automatically accept it. And then comes the clean exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel on its rule against civil nuclear trade with a country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This will not be a best of three outcome: India must win all three games to get the nuclear deal through. While we have the secretary general of the IAEA Mohammed El Baradei in our corner in the world nuclear body, as per agreement the United States must push our case in the NSG. The problem is that with the Bush Administration in its lameduck phase, countries which may have otherwise gone along with the US in the NSG could now become a problem. There is a blithe assumption in some quarters in the country that IAEA and NSG approval will be a cakewalk. But we could be in for a rude shock. In the case of the IAEA, we already have a draft agreement, but when we go to the NSG we may find that in addition to the conditions the US has made in the 123 Agreement, we are asked to make commitments to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the proposed Fissile Material Cut off agreement being negotiated in Geneva.

Mainstream

But it is not the endgame alone that should interests us, but the game itself. Given his background as an arch- nationalist, Kalam only told us half the truth when he said that the country needed to import natural uranium to keep its nuclear power programme going. “ Our uranium reserves are limited. We will need a certain amount of uranium to attain the next stage in the fuel cycle producing energy on thorium which is available in abundance in India,” he said. Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar made the same point at the same meeting at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai. He pointed out that India was no longer “ technology limited” but “ raw material limited.” This is something of an understatement. India may boast of its small nuclear power station expertise, but the fact of the matter is that we have been stunted by the embargoes on us. As for the fast breeder, it offers us great promise of energy security, but there are still major technological challenges that must be overcome. The reality is that India also needs to be part of the world technology mainstream. This is important not only because it fertilizes your own endeavours, but because an open market is a source of cheaper and better components and technology. And surely if our fast breeder is a success, we would like to market the technology around the world. But that will not be possible as long as there are NSG restrictions on our civil nuclear trade. Let us also be humble and accept that we are unlikely to have some unique technology that will compel the NSG to come to terms with us. In the long debate over the desirability or otherwise of the deal, one fact that has been spun around is that nuclear power will be able to fulfil only a small fraction of our total demand, say 12 per cent by 2030. ( It is 3 per cent now) The point is that the 12 per cent could make the difference between a high and a low economic growth rate. When shortage occurs, say in Delhi currently, it is not the total power output that matters, but the shortage which could be of the order of 5- 10 per cent.

Security

So the marginal unavailability will be more important than the percentage it represents. In addition, it will also come as clean energy. Already there is considerable pressure on India and China to undertake mandatory emission controls in the post- Kyoto climate control treaty. By now it should be clear from the statements of people like former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra that the Indo- US nuclear deal will have no negative impact on India’s nuclear weapons programme. How could it ? Western critics are not wrong when they say that by being permitted to import natural uranium for civil nuclear power, will enable India to use its limited resources for military purposes. As for nuclear tests, no agreement in the world would permit India the right to conduct them, and, frankly, in such matters relating to national security interests, you do not go around seeking permission from anyone.

Tactics

The problem with a section of domestic opinion is that they think that India is somehow entitled to have the nuclear trade embargo lifted. But we are not dealing with a legal regime alone, but also a cartel like the NSG which functions on the plane of international politics. Many of its members have not quite gotten over India’s successful defiance of the non- proliferation order and building nuclear weapons. There are, after all, 184 countries who have decided to accept what Indians feel is a second class status, and signed the NPT as non- nuclear weapon states. These are also the countries that form the bulk of the 45- nation NSG. They do not take too kindly to India’s pretensions. Many resent what they see as New Delhi’s tactic of using American clout to crash into the club. Some are rich and not particularly amenable to US pressure anyway. So, India’s “ entitlement mode” negotiation may not have much traction with the NSG. Instead, we may need to more substantially address the non- proliferation sentiment by accepting some kind of commitment to the CTBT and the FMCT. In the end, politics, rather than entitlement, is what will determine the outcome.
This article first appeared in Mail Today May 14, 2008

Nuke deal dumb charade

Mail Today March 18, 2008 p.4

Hope floats for nuke deal, at least for now

By Manoj Joshi in New Delhi

THE nuclear deal remains on track, but just about.
Monday’s UPA-Left meeting and the decision to hold the next session early next month seems to suggest that a carefully choreographed action is taking place.
“If the Left wanted to kill the deal, they could have done it on Monday,” said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of confidentiality.
In February, senator Joe Biden, who was visiting India with fellow senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry, had said “If we don’t have the (Indo-US nuclear) deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July, it will be very difficult to ratify.”
So, technically there is a window of opportunity that will remain open, ever so narrowly, till early May. This coincides nicely with the end of the Budget session of Parliament.
The government’s strategy seems to be to operate the next two phases simultaneously — getting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acquiescence for the India-specific safeguards agreement, and the “clean exemption” for civil nuclear trade from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
A formal Indian approval of the India-specific safeguards agreement by the IAEA in Vienna is now necessary. This agreement has been clinched, and its frozen text was approved by the Cabinet committee on security two weeks ago.
This must now be approved by the IAEA board of governors. While there is a formal 45-day process to summon the board, IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei is backing the deal and will provide a short cut.
According to the July 18, 2005 agreement, the US has to obtain the clearance for the deal from the NSG.
The frozen text of the India-IAEA agreement is already in circulation among NSG members and the US is in touch with them to obtain the necessary clearance.
The NSG approval may not be simple because the members want to connect it to the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). But putting a preamble — that talks of the need for a FMCT and CTBT — to the India-IAEA agreement may do the trick.
According to officials, both the IAEA and NSG processes could be telescoped into a month-and-a-half period. So even if the clock starts ticking mid-May, the agreement can be with the US Congress by July.
The NSG’s plenary meeting is scheduled to be held on May 19, 2008. This can be seen as the second deadline of sorts for the Indian government. This, too, can be met if all the ground work is done in advance, as it has clearly been done, according to Western diplomats.
While the deadlines take off from the US Congressional calendar as indicated by Biden, it is possible that a last-ditch approval can be obtained by the Centre and the Bush administration even as late as the end of 2008. But this will be an outside chance since no one can predict how the US, or for that matter the Indian, political process will play out.
Former US president Bill Clinton has said at the recent India Today Conclave that a future Democratic administration will honour the deal and be ready to renegotiate some portions if necessary. But, currently there are so many imponderables, that predictions are not easy.
India and the US were able to square the circle in arriving at a 123 Agreement that was deemed as being “impossible” by many. Today, the UPA government confronts the challenge of squaring the circle of convincing the Left and many others in the country that the Hyde Act does not impose needless restraints on the country’s sovereignty.

The El Baradei visit

With Congress chief Sonia Gandhi signaling her party’s determination to stay the course on the Indo-US nuclear deal, it is only a matter of time, before the government formally declares that it is negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But as of now, given the Left ultimatum on freezing action on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government remains committed to avoiding any formal negotiations with the international body. Last week, the government denied reports that it had been given a draft safeguards agreement by the IAEA. A DAE press note did obliquely confirm that it was talking to the IAEA when it noted that it was “not holding any formal negotiations with the IAEA.” No formal negotiations with the IAEA, get it ?

But the next meeting of the UPA-Left committee has now been put to October 22. This is four days after the scheduled meeting of the CPI(M) Politburo. Is there any significance to the date. Well, for one thing, it seems to suggest that the two sides are giving one more chance to each other for reaching a compromise. Had it not been so, they would have announced a divorce right now. But then, neither of the parties are ready for elections. In fact, no one is. But, the Left has to consider the sorry state of its party unit in Kerala, and the situation in West Bengal. In the latter state, it has to contend with the possibility of a Trinamul-Congress alliance, an alienation of the Muslims (one-quarter of the state's population) brought on by the Nandigram and Rizwanur episodes, as well as the outbreak of protests against the Public Distribution System in the state. This is not a happy congruence.

So, the three day visit of International Atomic Energy Director-General Mohammed El Baradei is more likely to be an occasion to fine-tune relations between India and the international nuclear watch-dog who has been a strong and early supporter of the Indo-US nuclear deal. As it is the ostensible purpose of his visit is a technical one to speak at an energy conference, visit a nuclear research facility in Mumbai and meet with Indian nuclear officials. Sources in the government acknowledge that informal negotiations are taking place between the government and the IAEA for the nuclear safeguards agreement. But they say that this is happening in Vienna, and Dr. El Baradei is not involved in the nuts and bolts of the agreement as of now. The safeguards agreement is likely to follow the one that has been worked out for the two 1000MW reactors that India is getting from Russia at Kudankulam, so there is not that much work required for the agreement.

Last month, Indian officials held informal talks with the IAEA at the sidelines of the annual Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, but denied that it was conducting any formal negotiations. But there was enough in statements of ministers to suggest that that was indeed what was happening.

In addition to a safeguards agreement that will place eight Indian nuclear reactors under a perpetual inspection regime of the IAEA, India is committed to signing an additional protocol with the IAEA for stepped up inspections on all the sites that will be safeguarded. However, officials say that the actual timeline on the additional protocol is more open-ended. The Hyde act only requires India to have made "substantial progress" towards negotiating the additional protocol and there is no requirement to have one before the deal enters into force. (Thanks to Sid Varadarajan for this and the following)

The sequencing of the operationalsation of the Indo-US nuclear deal now is the following:

1. India negotiates text of safeguards agreement with IAEA secretariat

2. Copy of final text goes to Nuclear Suppliers Group

3. NSG changes rules

4. US Congress approves 123

5. India signs safeguards agreement with IAEA

6. Eventually an additional protocol is concluded and enters into force.

But this is the technical time-line. There is another, a political clock, that has already begun ticking towards another general election.

Nuclear deal: Future tense, but the show goes on

This post has been revised on September 22

You can already see the nods and winks going on between New Delhi and Washington, as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. While no one is saying anything officially, and taking care not to show any further “operationalisation” of the Indo-US nuclear deal, there is clearly action taking place behind the scenes. The government is compelled to act as it does because the Left, particularly the CPI(M) seems determined to scuttle it. Writing in Hindustan Times, Nilova Roy Chaudhury says that the government is determined to wind up the IAEA negotiations by October and seek the NSG waiver thereafter.

After agreeing to be part of a committee that would discuss the Left’s concern, Mr. Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) General Secretary undercut that position by declaring at a public rally in New Delhi on September 18 that the government now postpone action on the deal for six months “Otherwise, there would be a political crisis in the country. We do not want that.” This is a “too clever by half” kind of a statement designed to scuttle the deal, and it is unlikely to wash.

There are two time-lines at work on the nuclear deal-- one is a technical one, and the other political. A senior official familiar with the negotiations told me last week that India will have to meet these two objectives in the coming month or two “because President Bush is unlikely to have any power to influence Congress beyond February or March this year”. Otherwise the process to spill over into next summer, which in effect means 2009-- since 2008 is a Presidential Election year in the US. This would put the entire deal in a limbo, the more likely scenario is that the two countries will seek to push ahead within this year. This is likely to be the subject of the expected meeting between External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji and his US counterpart Condeleezza Rice later this month on the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

The technical time-line requires India to negotiate its India specific additional protocol and safeguards agreement with the IAEA. While India would be working on existing templates on both agreements, there are key differences that require extensive negotiations. The IAEA has an additional protocol in its books since 1997, but this relates to tightening inspection procedures for non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). In other words the IAEA procedures relate to preventing NNWS from making nuclear weapons. But India already has nuclear weapons, and the US has accepted this and so the India-specific agreement has to reflect this. The safeguards agreement will be easier and can be based on the agreement that India has signed with the IAEA for the two Koodankulam reactors being built with Russian help.

Only when India has these two agreements can it go the NSG and request a rule change. According to an official, the procedure here could be “a simple line added to the existing guidelines or it could be a more complicated agreement.” He said that it was difficult to predict how the 45-nation body will respond to India’s request for an unconditional exception to its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the NPT. India can negotiate behind the scenes with the IAEA and NSG, but at some point it must arrive at an open agreement with them. And that is the point the political time-line kicks in. As per the agreement, it is the US that has to get India the exemption from the NSG, so India need not directly interface with the cartel till the very end. On Friday (September 21) the US briefed 100 officials from 33 member countries. Richard Stratford, Director at the Office of Nuclear Energy Affairs in the US State Department told Press Trust of India "We are also putting forth India's case for clean, unconditional exemption and we are trying hard on that."

At any sign that New Delhi is negotiating with the IAEA or NSG on the nuclear deal, the 60-member Left group is committed to withdrawing its support from the UPA government leaving it with a minority in the Lok Sabha. The government may not fall immediately, but its days would be numbered, with both the Left and the Congress party seeking to maneuver themselves into an advantageous position vis-à-vis the General Election that will follow. But now there seems to be some rethinking going on in the CPI(M). The enigmatic statements of 94-year old Jyoti Basu seems to suggest that the party will climb down after the meeting of its politburo and the central committee at the end of the month in Kolkata.

After reaching agreement with the US on the “123 Agreement” New Delhi was to work out a safeguards agreement and an India-specific additional protocol with the IAEA, and thereafter obtain the approval of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to amend its guidelines to permit nuclear trading with India. After these benchmarks are reached, the US Congress would again take a “yes” or “no” vote to make the deal operational.

The India-US 123 Agreement

The text is finally out. It can be seen here in the Ministry of External Affairs website where you may have to search for it a bit. I have it here as well in a web hosting service and is likely to be here for a month or so and more if people download it.

1. Supply assurances are contained in section 5.6 2.2b and 5.4 and they belie the claim made by critics that the Obama amendment to the Hyde Act would somehow prevent these from being made by the US.

2. Reprocessing is contained in section 6.3 and the fear that the US will string us along has been belied by specific commitment that negotiations will begin in 6 months of an Indian request and be completed within a year thereafter.

3. Consequences of nuclear testing is in article 14 and it is not absolute, but is conditioned by circumstances and the impact on Indian security. 14.3 belies the claim that the US will terminate or slow down cooperation based on foreign policy divergence. This section says that only a material breach of the agreement, as determined by the IAEA board, could lead to this. In other words, no capricious termination.

4. Right of return is in 14.5 and is clear that it will be through a consultative process and conditioned by the need for uninterrupted operation of reactors. It will also provide for compensation and 14.8 ensures that it will not be in derogation of 5.6 (supply assurances)

6. Non-hindrance clauses. 2.4 provides that the “purpose of this agreement is to provide peaceful nuclear cooperation and not to affect the unsafeguarded nuclear activities of either party.” So the agreement cannot be interpreted to affect either India’s indigenous programe, or military programme.
7. Fallback safeguards. Critics said that this could be used by the US to conduct inspections of Indian facilities. 10.4 says that the determination that the IAEA is indeed unable to do so would be made by the IAEA Board of Governors and no other party. And should this happen, the supplier and the recipient will consult to agree on “appropriate verification measures.”

7. Nuclear trade. This is one area that is qualified. While 5.1 provides for nuclear materials, including low enriched uranium, 5.2 says that “sensitive nuclear technology” which means reprocessing, enrichment and heavy water production technology” and certain critical components for such facilities will require an amendment to the 123. While some may see this as falling short of Indian demands, the provision is actually more than what other Nuclear Weapons States get.
8. Nuclear by-products. Clearly the US had enormous concerns about the issue of reprocessing rights for India. Page 22, the last page of the agreement, seems to be an addendum in the form of an "agreed minute" that has two technical sections that relate to the use and by-products of US-origin nuclear and non-nuclear material.
   

India-US 123 Agreement: A summary

Article I is mainly about definitions.

Article II – “Scope of Cooperation “ is important, especially it’s clauses point to the gains beyond nuclear materials and technology.

Section 2 ‘a’ talks of “advanced nuclear energy” R&D, section ‘c’ of “facilitation of exchange of scientist… and collaborative research” – all areas that had been closed to us till now.

Section 2‘d’ clarifies that “full civil nuclear cooperation” means activities relating “to reactors and aspects of associated nuclear fuel cycle”

Section 2‘e’ notes that it will involve the “development of a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors.”

Section 4 is important because it says that “nothing in this agreement shall be interpreted” as affecting India’s indigenous programmes, both civil and military.

Article V deals with the transfer of nuclear materials and technology—the heart of the agreement.

Section 2 makes it clear that the US will not provide India with enrichment, reprocessing or heavy water production technology. To do so, India would have to seek an amendment of the ‘123 Agreement.” India has all these technologies and is not seeking them. However, it is seeking components of these “sensitive” technologies, but this is a matter that has been left for further negotiation. Considering that the US does not give such technology to anyone, their decision to leave the matter for negotiation in the future is a gain for India.

Section 4 says that the quantity of material transferred related to the “operation of reactors for their lifetime.”

Section 6 puts in a legal binding form, the American commitment of July 18, 2005 to “to create the necessary conditions for India to have assured and full access to fuel for its reactors.” So under section 6b the US has expressed its willingness to incorporate these assurances in the 123 Agreement, and to support India to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel” to prevent disruption of supply.

If the disruption still occurs, the US would join India to set up a group of friendsly suppliers like Russia, France and UK to “pursue such measures as would restore fuel supply to India.”

Article VI deals with the nuclear fuel cycle issues and the agreement gives India the “front end” right to enrich uranium, as well as the back-end right to reprocess the spent fuel.

Section i) is important because it allows India to enrich Uranium to 20 per cent, which is what is required for a power plant.

Section iii) is the right to reprocess the spent fuel. This is conditional on India setting up a new national reprocessing facility and will require the parties to agree on “arrangements and procedures” to reprocess in this facility. To ensure that the process is not open-ended, the two are required to begin consultations on the arrangements in six months of the Indian request and to conclude the process within a year.

Articles VII and VIII deal with the issues of storage and physical protection of the nuclear materials and equipment. Article IX commits India not to use any material or equipment to produce a nuclear explosive device or any other military purpose.

Article X relates to IAEA safeguards.

Besides committing itself to ensuring safeguards in perpetuity through the special India-IAEA agreement, Section 4 makes it clear that if the IAEA declares that it is unable to carry out its duties, India and the US will consult on the best way to meet the need for verification.

Article XI related to environmental protection, Article XII to its implementation
Article XIII commits the two to consult each other and do everything they can to ensure the honest implementation of the agreement.

Article XIV is the termination or cessation clause which is there in every agreement.

Section 1 says that either party can terminate the agreement after 1 years notice. This is a standard kind of a clause.

Section 2 is the important because it qualifies the important issue of a cessation that may occur because of another nuclear test by India. Without mentioning nuclear testing, the agreement says that the parties would consult with each other before termination and would “take into account” whether the reasons for seeking the termination were related to “a party’s serious concern about a changed security environment or as a response to a similar action by other states which could impact national security.” In other words a Chinese, Pakistani or even US nuclear test preceding an Indian one would not necessarily lead to the termination of the agreement.

Section 3 emphasises that other grounds for termination would have to be nothing short of a “material violation or breach” of the IAEA safeguards agreement, one that is declared so not my the US, but by the IAEA Board of Governors.

Section 5 deals with the return of US-origin material and equipment in the event of a termination of an agreement. This would have to be done after consultation and the US would have to give “special consideration” to the requirements of “uninterrupted operation of nuclear reactors”.

Section 8 explicitly states that the purpose of this article is not to “derogate” from the rights of the parties under article 5.6

Articles XV, XVI and XVII relate to the standard requirement of settlement of disputes, entry into force and duration (40 years) and the administrative arrangements relating to the agreement.

Some more thoughts on the India-US nuclear deal

The slow and deliberately choreographed movement towards revealing the text of the Indo-US 123 Agreement has now reached it’s penultimate stage. Next week, in all likelihood, it will be made available to all. The Indian government has worked to build up opinion across the board through selective briefings (voluntary disclosure: I was in one of them). Two important public briefings have also taken place in New Delhi ( you will have to look in the press briefings for July 27, 07 for the text) and Washington DC. In New Delhi, National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, Department of Atomic Energy Chief Anil Kakodkar and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon were the briefers, in Washington DC it was US Undersecretary of State Nick Burns.

They are targeting the political class which has been largely ignorant of the issues involved. The Markey riposte was par for the course for the "non-proliferation ayatollahs" in the US. In India, the Left’s reaction has been muted, because it knows that only by bringing down the government can the agreement be blocked. The BJP’s ‘sensible’ wing is for the agreement, though as of now they have merely commended the government’s negotiating prowess. But it has been equally important to get the Congress party on board, and that has been done in Congress-style, by a briefing to the Congress Working Committee and a congratulatory resolution hailing the PM.

There is still a great deal of confusion about the nature of the deal. Let us take up the issues one by one.

Prior Consent for reprocessing: The US has provided such consent to the EURATOM and Japan, and now India. The essence of the arrangement is the belief that leakage of material in the reprocessing area is a far more serious problem than a breach in other safeguards procedures. They are based around the “timely warning” principle. This is what a US State Department publication has to say on this, “ While the assurances of peaceful use that safeguards provide cannot be absolute, it is vital that such safeguards be as robust and effective as possible, for the risk of detection makes diversion more difficult and helps deter the pursuit of illicit nuclear programs. It is essential to the integrity and the objectives of the NPT regime that safeguards be able to provide timely warning of diversion, enabling an effective international response to be mounted.”

Towards this end, India offered the US a dedicated national facility, that will not only come under IAEA safeguards, but one that that will, be built to their specifications. When a batch of US-origin fuel is ready for reprocessing, India will call for a meeting, which the US will have to convene within 6 months, and the modalities and safety issues will be discussed. The US will okay the plan, or provide reasons as to why it cannot do so, all within the space of another year. The presumption is that subject to safety and security and non-diversion, the reprocessing permission will be available.

The fact is that such a situation remains in the realm of the future as of now. India will first have to acquire a US reactor, fuelled by US-origin fuel and run it till it accumulates a certain amount of spent fuel so as to reprocess it. An optimistic process would see this happening in 10-15 years from now. In the meantime, India will have time to build the promised facility and build up US confidence levels that the procedures in the plant are transparent and diversion proof.

Termination of cooperation: The US is bound by law to terminate cooperation with India if it conducts a nuclear test. As the Prime Minister told the CWC, India retains the right to conduct nuclear tests, just as the US reserves the right to react to an Indian test as per its laws. At the same time the US has agreed that it is committed to the “continuous operation of reactors” it may supply. In other words, it will not block India’s efforts to keep the reactor going with fuel from other sources. In that sense, the termination of the Indo-US cooperation will really mean the cessation of Indo-US cooperation, not that with the NSG. In any case there could be loopholes here too, because the Bush administration is no admirer of the Comprehensive Test Ban and would not like to hold the sword of sanctions over India should, say, China resume testing, or more piquantly, the US itself decided to resume testing.

Fallback safeguards: This has been a contentious issue between the two parties. The US Congress which is asked to cough up funds for various world bodies is worried that if the IAEA goes broke, it may suspend inspections on Indian facilities. So there were calls for “fallback” safeguards, possibly by the US itself. This is anathema to India which has since accepted the possibility that it may, in such a circumstance, provide the funds to the IAEA to carry out it’s Indian inspections !

Some larger issues:

In the July 18, 2005 agreement “ President Bush conveyed his appreciation to the Prime Minister over India's strong commitment to preventing WMD proliferation and stated that as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states.”

By and large the US has kept this promise. India is now getting the treatment that EURATOM, Japan or Switzerland get. One important aspect of the negotiations is that this has not come to India as a right. As a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India could not demand that it be treated as a signatory. The Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel has effectively embargoed India and squeezed our programme enormously—we have more installed wind energy than nuclear energy despite huge expenditures in the nuclear front.

It is our fortune that the geopolitical trends impelled the US to lead the effort to lift the embargo. But to extrapolate that this means that we were always “right” and they were “wrong” is to miss the point. International politics is rarely about rights and wrongs. They need us geopolitically, and we need them, if we are to have a viable nuclear power programme, to provide us nuclear materials and technology. This is a fair exchange.

But many, especially the old scientists who had borne the brunt of the US embargo, allowed the bitterness to overcome rational thinking. They began to place demands that would be tantamount to the US and the NSG community eating humble pie and admitting that they had been “wrong” and India “right.”

Fortunately, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his officials realized that a “need- based” approach works better than a “rights- based” one, especially since the rest of the world doesn’t feel we have the right to anything as non-signatories to the NPT. It is this need-based approach that finally persuaded the US to give us prior-consent for reprocessing and saving the agreement. India explained that we need reprocessing rights, not only because we need plutonium to use in our fast-breeder programme, but also to take care of accumulations of spent fuel that will result from the burgeoning of large-size reactors that could come in the wake of the agreement.