Grab this deal

This article appeared in Mail Today November 28, 2007

Today, the Lok Sabha will begin the long-anticipated debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Expect more sound than light, and a lot of smoke. The debate will be strictly partisan, and you will be none the wiser. This is a pity considering the vital national importance of the subject. Fortunately, from the outset, there has been nothing hidden about the deal. Officials on both sides have leaked details to the media, the legislative processes have been quite open, and the outcome— India’s separation plan, the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement are available for anyone to read and interpret. Perhaps because of the information overload, and some of it is technical-- both in the legislative and scientific sense—there is a lot of confusion surrounding the deal.
The deal is not exclusively about energy, neither is it about India and the United States.
But it is about India’s relationship with the entire developed world, shaped as they are to a considerable extent by the embargoes placed on India’s nuclear and space programmes because we are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. All the action till now in New Delhi, Washington and Vienna will not operationalise the deal. Only the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group’s clean exemption on its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the NPT will do so. In that sense the US is merely the chowkidar to the gates of the NSG, the cartel of nations with significant nuclear technology and materials.
You may ask why US ? The reason can be answered by another question: Why is US hosting the Annapolis Conference on Palestine, or why is the US concerned about North Korea’s nuclear reactor? The US is seen by its contemporaries-- and they are that since it has no real rivals-- as the world’s foremost power on whom rests a disproportionate responsibility to maintain the world order. George Bush may have single-handedly diminished US capital by his wanton ways, but the US still remains the default power on the world’s problem issues. Dealing with India’s nuclear status is one such issue and all NSG countries have decided that the US will be the nodal country on the subject.
With its moribund nuclear industry and plethora of rules, the US is unlikely to be the main commercial gainer from the nuclear deal. The first four reactors after the NSG go-ahead are likely to be Russian because the Koodankulam site has the necessary clearances for them and the reactor type has been certified by Indian regulators. The next would probably be a French reactor. As the chowkidar, the US may be entitled to a tip, 10 to 15 per cent, which could be the trade in components, computers and control systems it may export.
American gains will be political, and they are not inconsiderable. The deal is vital for the US goal of incorporating India in a global security architecture in the coming decades.
“Aha !” you may say, if you believe in conspiracy theories. “We told you so.” But that aim is less sinister than it sounds. First, there is nothing the US can do today to compel us to do anything against our own interests. Second, while India and the US both have national interests that may, on occasion, clash, on the whole they are much more congruent today than ever. To reject a policy option because we have matching interests would be perverse.
India and the US share common interests with China, Japan, EU and Russia and almost everyone, for a secure and stable environment. Given its global presence, the US must have a special place in our calculations. It is the only power that has the capability of intervening, militarily or diplomatically in countries of vital importance for us—Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and, to an extent, even China. Good relations with the US also have a dividend in the form of better relations with its close allies, principally Japan and the European Union.

All major powers seek strategic autonomy, but India seems to be stuck with its 1970s obsession with autarky. While in the field of economic relations the idea has been thrown overboard, its its strategic avatar still holds some fascination for the Left and the RSS. In today’s globalised world, we must understand the difference between autarky and autonomy. The latter is desirable, the former self-defeating. One puts you in the league of North Korea and Cuba, the other with China and the European Union.
The striking aspect of the Left raising fears about New Delhi being subservient to Washington is that they are doing so at a time when India is the strongest it has been in 60 years—bulging foreign exchange reserves, sizzling economic growth, a vast nuclear armed military and a sophisticated industrial and intellectual infrastructure. India’s relations with its smaller neighbours are the best ever, as are those with old adversaries like China and Pakistan. The only answer for this deliberate fear-mongering is that the Left is not happy with this picture.
Coming to technical issues: There are some who claim that India will lose the right to test. Not true. In fact the US has been remarkably accommodating on this score. But by the same measure with which we have retained the right to test, the US, too, has the right to react. But this is a hypothetical proposition since the eventuality is not around the corner. There are some facile arguments about India placing its reactors under safeguards “in perpetuity” and not getting perpetual fuel guarantees. In fact the fuel guarantees are perhaps the most extensive one can find anywhere.

India tested on May 11 and 13 1998. The government’s statement after the May 13 test said we had "completed the planned series." India’s chief scientist, Dr. R. Chidambaram and the DRDO specialist K. Santhanam assured the government that there was no need for further tests. Having invited the world’s opprobrium, we could have gone on testing, but we didn’t. Most of the scientists who today claim we need more tests were not involved in the weapons programme, or had retired long before India’s nuclear weapons programme really got underway in the mid-1990s.
It is difficult to see what the BJP now wants by way of renegotiating the 123 Agreement. A document on the “evolution of India’s nuclear policy” was tabled in Parliament on May 27, 1998 noted “Subsequent to the tests Government has already stated that India will, now observe a voluntary moratorium and refrain from conducting underground nuclear test explosions. The basic obligation of the CTBT are thus met.” In the same statement it also indicated willingness to move towards “a de-jure formalization” of this declaration. The statement also expressed India’s desire to participate in the Fissile Material Cut off Treaty (FMCT). These commitments were reiterated by Prime Minister Vajpayee to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 1998:

Accordingly, after concluding this limited testing program, India announced a voluntary moratorium on further underground nuclear test explosions. We conveyed our willingness to move towards a de jure formalization of this obligation. In announcing a moratorium, India has already accepted the basic obligation of the CTBT.

The Indo-US nuclear deal has the power to change India’s relationship with the US and the rest of the developed world. The agreements that shape it are not static documents, they are subject to change and modification. As it is, an international agreement is worth the piece of paper it is written on, unless there is a commitment and interest of both or all parties to uphold it. The process of meeting reciprocal obligations will build up trust, which generate higher levels of commitment. In other words, the minor flaws gaps that remain will also be addressed. But as is the way with life-- in the fullness of time and fitness of things.

Manmohan's illness as a factor in the recent political crisis

This article appeared in Mail Today (New Delhi)November 21, 2007

September-October 2007: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former finance minister, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, economic bureaucrat and economist, confronted the worst moment of his career. The man whose personal integrity is a byword in India’s dirty politics and whose personal reputation helped crisis-hit India change directions in 1991, found himself battling with enemies from the right and left, as well as from within. An angry prime minister dared the Left to withdraw support on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the doctrinaire anti-American CPI(M) General Secretary, Prakash Karat, took the opportunity to tug that rug under the government’s feet. After a show of determination, the government retreated in panic and froze the process. The spat and its outcome resulted in his reputation suffering the worst buffeting it had ever got in his otherwise sterling career.

Crisis

The Prime Minister’s behaviour pattern was uncharacteristic even though the provocation from the Left was great. His apogee was the August 6 interview to The Telegraph, “I told them to do whatever they want to do; if they want to withdraw support, so be it”. But then came the perigee on October 12 at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit when he said, “If the deal does not come through, it will be a disappointment. But sometimes in life you have to live with them. It is not the end of life”.
Many explanations have been put forward for the Prime Minister’s behaviour — pique, intolerance, arrogance and so on. Few have bothered to look at another factor which was no secret, but whose significance has been grossly underestimated.
The Prime Minister was being bothered by that nagging, sometimes dangerous, problem of age — an enlarged prostate gland. According to doctors, the PM had been suffering from benign prostatic condition for the past three years. Prostate surgery is usually an elective procedure. But if the PM had the surgery at the time he did, Saturday, September 15 — in the midst of a full-blown political crisis — it is clear that his condition was not good and that either he, or his doctors, felt there was some urgency. Undoubtedly his doctors would have told him that it was a minor procedure and that he would be fit as a fiddle in no time. Fortunately, the surgery went well and the growth was benign. But the recovery may not have been as smooth as he had been told it would be. One reason is, as appearances show, the Prime Minister is a somewhat fragile person. He is also old and he celebrated his 75th birthday while convalescing on September 26. The first indication that things were not going as per schedule was when the PM was not discharged on Monday, as planned, but a day later. The next indication came on September 28, when a terse note issued by the PMO said that the PM was still recovering and that his visit to Punjab and Himachal was cancelled. On Air Force Day — October 8, three weeks after the surgery, the Prime Minister was clearly not well. He sat out the entire reception on the sofa, while President Pratibha Patil and Ms Sonia Gandhi mixed with the assemblage. It is difficult to believe that the PM's frame of mind was not affected by his illness and surgery, minor though both were mooted to be.
Only in the last fifty years, when hair-trigger decision-making became an issue, has the subject been studied by social historians and what it reveals is not pleasant. According to one, Bert Park, notwithstanding what his physicians said, President Franklin Roosevelt was seriously ill between 1940-44 and it affected his performance as a war leader; he has also linked Hitler’s rise to the age-related dementia of British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald and German Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg who, as one story goes, signed everything that his staff placed before him, including a packet of sandwiches. Even today it is not clear as to the degree to which Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s serious illness affected his political judgment and attitude in the crucial months of January-August 1947 .

History

Perhaps the most dramatic impact of illness on public affairs was the influenza pandemic of 1918 which killed more people than the Great War of 1914-1918. It ran its course through most of 1919, the first half of which took up the Paris Peace Conference that gave the world the terribly flawed Treaty of Versailles. Many negotiators were struck down by the flu, and nearly one-third died. President Woodrow Wilson’s chief of staff Colonel Edward House was struck down and as he noted in his diary in late February, “When I fell ill in January, I lost the thread of affairs and I am not sure that I have ever gotten fully back.” Wilson arrived in mid-March, at the final stages of the negotiations, and was struck down by the flu. The Treaty of Versailles has been called the worst treaty in the world, ever. It imposed punitive terms on Germany, leading to the rise of Hitler and World War II, it delayed the US’s entry into the world as a great power, and gave us the flawed League of Nations that did little to avert the catastrophe.
In India, things have not reached that stage, though we do not know how ill Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was at the time of the Tashkent Conference, dying soon after. But you have to only recall a couple of instances of the Vajpayee prime ministership to realise that it is not that far-fetched. Vajpayee had a number of ongoing problems when he became PM — prostate, kidney, but after he took office, his most nagging ones were his arthritic knees.

Vajpayee

For almost a year before the surgery, on June 7, 2001, Vajpayee was down and out. People who met the septuagenarian leader him found him listless and inattentive and prone to long silences. Whether or not the long healing process was the cause, is difficult to say, but the surgery was followed by the disastrous Agra Summit with President Pervez Musharraf on July 14-16 and the threat, shortly thereafter, by Vajpayee to resign because of allegations that his kin may have been involved in a scam. Unfortunately, the surgery did not help him as much as he expected, and the then 74-year old leader took more than a year to regain his composure, having the indignity of being attacked for being “asleep at the wheel” in a Time magazine article in June 2002.
The problem with doctors attending prime ministers, and of PMs listening to doctors, is that they think that the aura of the office will somehow make recovery and convalescence different. You may get world-class medical treatment and care, but the human body does not know whether you are the PM or his driver. What matters are the laws of nature and your age.
In a country with a tradition of geriatric leadership, the issue of the impact of illness on decision-making should be a serious one. The idea that one man’s illness can change history may appear somewhat far-fetched. But it would be difficult to deny that when a leader as crucial as a president or a prime minister undergoes illness and recovery, his or her state of mind is not normal and can impair their judgment. To believe otherwise would be to believe they are not human, and that, of course, is not the case.

One step forward, two steps back

In contrast to Lenin's dictum, "Two steps forward, one step back," the Left has succeeded in inflicting a wound on itself by its maneuvering on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its concession allowing the government to begin negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency means it has abandoned its stand demanding that the government do nothing to "operationalise" the deal. In fact, all that is left to operationalise the deal from the Indian side is to work out an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Thereafter, the US will take the agreement to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and seek an exemption from its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only the US can do that,India is not an NSG member (as yet). But India can, and has been talking to individual NSG members for the past year or so, though there is no public record of the discussions. Formally, it is the US that will have to approach the NSG and seek, as India has demanded, a "clean exemption" ie, an unconditional one. This is not likely to be easy because the non-proliferationists in the US and Europe are mobilising their efforts to ensure that an NSG exemption is conditional on India's agreeing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and commit itself to the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, if and when the latter is negotiated.Conditions are likely to be political dynamite in India and will be unacceptable to New Delhi.

The IAEA agreement is not likely to be too complicated because it will be based, as we have noted before, on the basic IAEA safeguards document relevant, INFCIRC/66. The Left has demanded, and the government has conceded, that the safeguards agreement will placed before the Left-UPA committee for approval. Just how this highly technical document be judged on by a political committee is not clear.The Left could insist on demanding provisions that are available for the de jure nuclear weapons states (under the NPT provision of having conducted a nuclear test before January 1, 1967). However, this would be a deal-breaker. Because while the US is willing to give India a de facto nuclear weapons state status, it simply does not have the power to turn the clock back and give India a de jure one. Seeking parity for the sake of parity will be a counter-productive move.
Whatever it is, Comrade Prakash Karat has given special interviews to indicate that there is no change in the Left's policy. That is hard to accept considering that he had declared that any step to operationalise the deal would lead to a withdrawal of the Left's support.
My guess is that the government is readying for an election by March-April and at the appropriate moment, it will move to clinch the deal and precipitate an election.

The worm is turning

To go by what the media says, the nuclear deal is still showing some signs of life. This is what The Hindu reported on a press conference held during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to New Delhi:

Maintaining that the government remained committed to the civil nuclear deal with the United States, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said, “We have not reached the end of the road” even if there was some delay in operationalising it.

I am not surprised. I never believed it was dead. It did suffer a terrible blow when the Left suddenly pulled the rug under it in August, and a worse one when party members and UPA allies stabbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the back.The reason why I remain optimistic is not some special information, but my analysis of what underpins its robustness.

In my view, the Indo-US nuclear deal, occasioned perhaps, by US worries about China, is actually a a larger geopolitical shift that is taking place as a result of the end of the Cold War. This is about the new world order that Bush 41 spoke of in 1990. India's nuclear status has been a pill stuck in the collective throats of the international community for quite a while. Bush 41 tried first to handle this by pinning down India and Pakistan in a regional arrangement, but this did not work. After India’s nuclear tests, and especially after 9-11 the situation was such that the idea of equating India and Pakistan became laughable. Pakistan was on the verge of economic collapse, the A Q Khan network had been exposed, and was now seen as a “rogue” state that had to be controlled. So, the US emphasis shifted to co-opting India.

The nuclear deal is a means of doing that, and there is nothing dishonourable about this. India is getting an opportunity to join the world community, whose leading lights also constitute the Nuclear Suppliers Group. There is an unwritten consensus among them that the US will work out the terms of engagement, and the Indo-American 123 Agreement is precisely that.

American benevolence has nothing to do with a sudden love for India and Indians, it is again, systemic. Indian economic weight is growing in handsome measure, its military power, though dissipated in internal policing, is not insubstantial. India is one of the most open societies in the world, fiercely democratic, naturally capitalistic, indeed a natural ally of the US, once the latter gets off its high horse and begins to understand the consequences of its misadventure in Iraq.

As for the nuclear deal politics, what we are seeing currently is intense effort to knock sense into the BJP’s head. Everyone, but everyone knows that the party is taking a completely opportunistic position on the deal—in other words, opposing it for the sake of doing so, rather than any principle. Brajesh Mishra’s comment is kind of non sequitur:

“If I were to get credible guarantees from the government about the integrity of what we (the NDA) had left behind three and a half years ago, what has been done in these three and a half years for them to prove that there are also enthusiastic about the nuclear weapons programme, then I would say, personally, to go forward with the deal because I am not so critical of the US for following this particular policy. I am critical of the government bending to the wishes of the US.”

The real pressure is coming from the BJP’s “natural allies”—its supporters and well-wishers in the corporate and business world who are unable to comprehend the party’s stand. No one knows what has driven that stand which reflects the views of the xenophobic right of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. Apparently Mr. Arun Shourie is its key mentor within the party’s core committee that decides policy. Why he, or for that matter Mr. Yashwant Sinha are there is a bit of a mystery since neither have any political base.

The BJP now has the option of simply backtracking and supporting the deal “in the national interest” or negotiating an arrangement with the Congress that could see the Parliament pass a “sense of Parliament” resolution underlining India’s belief in an “independent” foreign policy. The problem, however, is that the Congress and BJP are not on talking terms—the PM literally does not talk to the leader of the opposition. It is in such circumstances, of course, that the extremes of the Left flourish.

Confronted with the possibility that it may be left holding the can, the Left has changed tune. CPI(M) Party chief Prakash Karat who virtually accused Manmohan Singh of being an American stooge says in The Telegraph that he respects his integrity.

New Delhi, Oct. 30: In his first public overture to Manmohan Singh since the bitter stand-off began in early August over the Indo-US nuclear deal, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat today underlined the Left’s “respect” for the Prime Minister and appreciated his “unquestioned integrity”.

Is that a climb-down? Or an effort to get on to the "statesmanship" horse, after unhorsing the PM? You decide.

Bitter October

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, say reports, is a bitter man. He feels particularly let down by allies, since he expected that the opposition would be unsparing towards the Indo-US nuclear deal anyway. There are two things he can do—swallow his bitterness like a kaliyug Shiva and stay in office, or spit it out and quit. Either way, there are implications for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. He may not be much of a political heavy-weight, but he is clearly indispensible for the Congress president who does not trust a Pranab Mukherji and is not likely to hand the government over to the lightweight and incompetent Shivraj Patil.

But the fact is that there is an irretrievable breakdown in the relations between the Prime Minister and the Left on one hand, and between the PM and his coalition allies who finally slipped the knife into his back earlier this month. There is, no doubt, an element of unhappiness with Ms Sonia Gandhi as well who went along with Lalu, Karunanidhi, Pawar and Co in the process, resulting in the current impasse. Worse, a day or so later on October 12, during the Hindustan Times conference, when asked as to who she depends on for political advice, named her son, daughter and son-in-law and did not even make a passing reference to her prime minister.

The Left played dirty by going along with the deal through 2005, 2006 and most of 2007 and pulled the rug under his feet after the enormous achievement of the Indian “123 Agreement” which is extremely favourable to us. His allies—Lalu, Karunanidhi and Pawar—not only went along with him, but were represented or actually part of the Union Cabinet that approved every step of the negotiations, and finally endorsed the “123 Agreement.” On July 25, a combined meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security and the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs okayed the 123. Incidentally, that very evening, Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader D. Raja were given a special presentation on the deal by officials at the Prime Minister’s residence. There are no reports of the Left having declared themselves dead-set against the deal at this stage. On August 19, according to The Hindu:

The key constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on Sunday night threw in their lot with coalition chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and expressed full confidence in their ability to address “all legitimate concerns” voiced by the Left parties.

The goings on of October 9/10 therefore were a surprise to Singh, though they should not have been. The allies may claim that it was one thing to give the endorsement above, quite another to have the cold water of an election thrown on their face. But the fact is that if they had held their nerve, they could have emerged winners, instead of the dispirited and confused bunch they appear now.

Now there are straws in the wind to suggest that the UPA is recovering some of the coherence it lost at that time. This is apparent from the outcome of the latest meeting of the UPA-Left committee on October 22. Prior to the meeting there were a lot of bombastic declarations demanding that the government announce the termination of the Indo-US nuclear deal, or leave it to the next US administration-- statements tantamount to a Congress party surrender. But the outcome of the meeting was anodyne, suggesting that it was the Left that backed off. The conclusion of Monday meeting declared that:

Issues currently before it [the committee] would be addressed in an appropriate manner and the operationalisation of the deal will take into account the Committee’s findings.

This is actually a restatement of the positions the committee has taken from the very outset and its reiteration indicates that the Congress is not budging and the Left could be up the creek without a paddle.

Reports in several papers now claim that the time frame of the nuclear deal will not be adhered to as regards India-specific safeguards negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scheduled for October, negotiations with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) slated for November and taking the deal to the U.S. Congress in January 2008.

Nicholas Burns seems to have repeated this view to a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. According to Reuters, Burns is reported to have said that the US was approaching election time and that it was tough to pass legislation at such times. Adding,

We don't have an unlimited amount of time...We'd like to get this agreement to the United States Congress by the end of the year.

He is right, but the technical timeline—which means the time required to get the technicalities of the deal worked out—actually extends all the way to the end of 2008. However, as the months pass, there is an inevitable loss of momentum and the chances of it being taken up by the Congress recede. The steps needed now are for the approval of an India-specific safeguards agreement by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Between you and me, this agreement is more-or-less ready and could be approved within a week of India’s request. While there is a formal 45-day process to summon the Board of Governors meeting, the IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei is backing the deal and will provide a short cut.

There is an NSG meeting scheduled in November and it is possible that the US will get pre-approval from their colleagues based on the prospective IAEA safeguards agreement. The NSG approval will not be simple because the members want to connect it to the Fissile Material Cut Off and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But a measure sandwiching the INFCIRC/ 66, the IAEA's basic standard agreement with some language on the FMCT and CTBT could pass.So the whole process can be telescoped into about a month. As for the US Congress, mid-2008 can be seen as the outside limit of prudent planning.

There has been some talk about how the Democratic party would look at the deal. The Hyde Act, that enabled the 123 Agreement to be arrived at was passed by an overwhelming vote of the US Congress. Observers expect that the non-proliferationists in the new putative Clinton Administration would make life difficult for India and Hillary has already signaled her views through an article in Foreign Affairs, saying she would push for the CTBT in 2009. However these observers do not realize that countries like the US do not make policy moves out of whim but considerable cogitation and analysis. What Bush II did was based on what Bush I had initiated. In addition, he built on the goodwill generated by Bill Clinton’s overtures to India. The Indo-US nuclear deal is part of Washington’s strategic grand design. India may be a cog in this, but an it is an increasingly important one.

So now we need to look at the political timeline here in India. Given the public postures, there is no chance that the Left will approve of the deal. So at some point the UPA must say they are going ahead, and when they do so, the Left will announce a withdrawal of support. The government need not fall immediately, but it will begin the clock ticking for the next elections. My guess would be that it could well be after the Gujarat elections whose results should be known by December 23. This times well with the end of the winter session of Parliament. So the technical and political timelines can be made to intersect in early January, leading to elections in May.

Almost every election in India is a paradigm shift and so will the next one be. The best the Indian people can hope for is the emergence of one, two or three fronts that have some ideological coherence and are coalitions with some dharma, not just opportunistic alliances that are used as stepping stones to political power.

And some more...

The advantage of a blog, even that of a journalist, is that you do not have to follow all the conventions of the profession. I would not put down the following in print because it is based on unconfirmed, or rather unconfirmable (sic) sourcing.
This explains that the Congress decision to abruptly back off from the Indo-US nuclear deal and the confrontation with the Left was because it feared a coup. Had the Left declared that it no longer supported the coalition, it would have gone into a minority status. At this point, had the Prime Minister called for the dissolution of Parliament, his voice may not have held the necessary authority. (For the balance of forces and the arithmetic in parliament look here.)
Especially, if it was not unanimous within the Council of Ministers. The RJD (Lalu), the NCP (Sharad Pawar) and the DMK could have said they did not agree with the Congress. Neither they, nor the bulk of the Congress party, are hot on the nuclear deal, especially if it forces them to face elections right now. The RJD and DMK would have lost the bulk of the seats they currently hold and so could many Congress MPs who may have been denied tickets. Bird in hand....
At this stage had someone, say Mr. Sharad Pawar, said he would form a government, the fat would have been on fire. He would have been backed by the BJP and broken the Congress, his long-term ambition and created a right-wing third front with the help of the DMK with the RJD and the Samajwadis supporting from outside. (For the DMK's perspective, see this.)

While the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi were prepared to call the Left's bluff, they did not realise that their right flank was exposed. So, as soon as some inkling of this threat became apparent, they acted-- and in haste-- leaving the Left somewhat bewildered.
It is, of course, possible that if the Congress can keep the Left on board for a while and secure its right flank, they could execute their coup later this year, or in the middle of next year when a collapse of the government would lead to a general election, rather than a search for another government. What kind of a coalition dharma do you really expect in kaliyug ?

Mysterious goings on in New Delhi

What is happening with the Indo-US nuclear deal ? The prime minister and Sonia Gandhi’s statements on Friday have set the cat among the pigeons. Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit , the PM said: “If the deal does not come through, it will be a disappointment. But sometimes in life you have to live with them. It is not the end of life.” Sonia Gandhi, too said that the Congress would try to address the concerns of its allies and the party “The dharma of coalition is to work together, try and understand and accommodate each other’s view.”
In our view, this seeming flip-flop of the Congress party and the government can be understood if you believe, as I do, that there is now a deal within a deal. In other words, the Congress and the Left have struck a deal to back off from their confrontation and arrive at a workable compromise that will see the deal move on to its logical culmination, perhaps on a slightly delayed time line. This is no doubt the achievement of Pranab Mukherji, Lalu Yadav, Sitaram Yechury and Sharad Pawar. So the process will involve formal agreement in the Left-UPA committee that is supposed to look into the deal. You need to read between the lines to get the Left's true reaction. Note, Mr. Karat has not said anything.

There are several straws in the wind to suggest that. First, a CPI(M) politburo meeting scheduled for October 18 has been postponed. Second, speaking at an Indian Express function, Kapil Sibal says that the Left has accepted the primacy of the 123 Agreement over the Hyde Act. “The Left has now agreed to the position that where there is a conflict between the Hyde Act and the 123 agreement, the 123 agreement prevails. That position has been agreed to.”

Till now the Left has been arguing that they are not against the deal per se, but the Hyde Act that allegedly commits India to follow the US foreign policy agenda. That this was factually untrue mattered little because most of us believed that the Left’s positions were motivated by blind anti-Americanism rather than reason. Once reason comes into play, and there are grounds to believe that it has, the Left’s loses its sharp edge.

My guess-- and this is a guess-- is that we will now have a compromise formula, where the Left will endorse this point, and in return the government may go along with a Parliament statement or resolution that purports to defang the toothless Hyde Act.

In the meantime, behind the scenes negotiations are going on with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the India-specific safeguards which Dr. Mohammed El Baradei keeps on saying are not that much of a problem."We are ready. I don't think we would take very long. It would be weeks, not more than weeks." My own belief is that some behind-the-scenes negotiations have already taken place based on what diplomats cutely term "non-papers"-- working drafts which are not attributable to any government or institutions. So, there would be a show of formal consultation, but the agreement would be done in a matter of a week or so after India gives its go-ahead. As for the NSG, that as per agreement, is America’s baby, though we will have to put in effort as well, but behind the scenes.

It is too early to say that all's well that ends well. But there should be no doubts that relations between Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) General Secretary who forced the confrontation and the Prime Minister are irreparably damaged because of the note of bitterness that they brought into the issue. Usually in politics these things don't matter, but both are ideologues in their own way, and it does tend to matter.

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.

Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi

The reason why Latin, a now extinct language, is still used in some form or the other, is because it has a remarkable facility for stating an issue in the most direct and coherent manner. That is why it is a favourite of lawyers and judges. The title of my previous blog, too, was a Latin phrase. Perhaps this is an effort to try and be as clear as possible on the vexed matter of the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Because the deal involves an American statute (the Hyde Act), a technical agreement, the Indo-US 123 Agreement, safeguards and an additional protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines, it is easy to mislead the man-on-the-street. A number of politicians and commentators have taken recourse to selective reading of the text or giving an unconscionable spin to phrases and clauses. In some cases it is a case of suggestion of a falsehood leading to the suppression of truth (the meaning of the phrase we have cited).
To my mind two articles on the deal in The Hindu bring this out. The first was one by Brahma Chellaney, a commentator on strategic affairs and author of a study on the earlier Tarapur agreement. The second is a rejoinder by Kapil Sibal, a minister in the UPA government and a noted lawyer. Read both for yourself to understand what I am trying to get at.

More on the nuclear deal

The Prime Minister has confirmed what has been known internally by the government for a long time—that the country is short of natural uranium. The shortage is such that it will not only inhibit our nuclear power production, but actually has the potential of undermining our vaunted indigenous three stage programme. Speaking at the ceremony inaugurating the Tarapur 3 & 4 reactors on August 31, 2007, Dr. Manmohan Singh said:

“At the same time, our uranium resource base is limited. We have, therefore, consciously opted for a closed fuel cycle approach ever since the beginning of our nuclear power programme. We need to expeditiously develop fast reactor technologies and intensify efforts to locate additional uranium resources in the country. Government will extend its full support in this regard.

Even as we pursue our three-stage programme, it is necessary to look at augmenting our capabilities. We need to supplement our uranium supplies from elsewhere even as the DAE has taken a number of laudable steps to maximize output within the limited resources. We must take decisive steps to remove the uncertainties that result from shortfall in fuel supplies to avoid disruptions in our nuclear power production programme.”(emphases added)

This is the text of the statement read out by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee after a meeting of leaders of the Congress and Left parties at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence on August 30, 2007:

In view of certain objections raised by the Left parties on the Indo-U.S. bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation, it has been decided to constitute a committee to go into these issues.

1. The composition of the committee will be announced shortly.

2. The committee will look into certain aspects of the bilateral agreement; the implications of the Hyde Act on the 123 Agreement and self-reliance in the nuclear sector; the implications of the nuclear agreement on foreign policy and security cooperation.

3. The committee will examine these issues. The operationalisation of the deal will take into account the committee’s findings.

This is my take on the issue:

The text of the agreement reached by the Manmohan Singh government and the Left parties over the impasse on the Indo-US nuclear deal is clearly a face-saving device. You can see it as a glass half-empty, or, as I do, as one half full. It does appear to us to be an anodyne measure that will help the deal to overcome the hiccup created by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat’s hard-line rejection of the deal.

The committee that will be created through the agreement will look into “certain aspects” of the 123 Agreement, as well as “the implications of the Hyde Act on the 123 Agreement and self-reliance in the nuclear sector… and on foreign policy and security cooperation.” The committee will no doubt tread on ground already walked on by the government itself. Is it likely that the government would not have studied the implications of the Hyde act on the 123 agreement ? Indeed, the agreement has been shaped by the Hyde act and the debates in the US Congress that preceded the act. Because the process has been relatively open, India is aware of the potential pitfalls that the legislative process could have created. However, forewarned by the time the act came into being—having done the route through the Congressional committees, debates in the two houses of Congress and finally at the reconciliation stage— the Indian authorities were able to ensure that none of the so-called “killer” amendments were able to pass.
Whatever was left over was taken care of by the US president’s signing statement. Bush bluntly noted that “My approval of the Act does not constitute my adoption of the statements of policy [ as listed in the Hyde Act] as U.S. foreign policy.”
So all that stuff about India following the American agenda on Iran and elsewhere are simply not true. Perhaps more important is that under customary international law, an international agreement, such as the 123 Agreement, will always domestic legislation like the Hyde Act. You may ask: How did the US deny us fuel for Tarapur in the late 1970s ? Actually the US did not deny us the fuel outright; they refused to activate the consultative mechanisms. That is the reason why the current 123 Agreement specifies time-bound procedures. The ghost of Tarapur I haunts the agreement.

As for self-reliance in the nuclear sector, it would be easy to show the committee that the 123 Agreement will actually be a life-line of sorts for India’s domestic nuclear industry. As per the three-stage plan, our current stock of pressurized heavy water reactors must yield enough plutonium so as to fuel our fast breeder reactors which will produce more plutonium, as well as Uranium 233 from thorium. This Uranium 233 will then be used with thorium in a process that will regenerate U 233 which can then be used with more thorium to provide an endless supply of nuclear power.

There is such an acute shortage of natural uranium that India is not able to run its current reactors at full strength. In addition it does not have fuel to power the reactors it is building. So importing fuel is vital for the success of our indigenous programme. Access to imported technology also provides us an important hedge in case our fast breeder reactors do not perform to the levels they are required to.

The issue of the impact of the 123 Agreement on our foreign policy and security cooperation are somewhat more difficult to assess. If you want to believe that India, a country with a record for taking independent foreign policy issues, will be bought over to the American camp because of this one agreement, you probably also believe that the stars are God's daisy chain. India cooperates with a variety of countries on trade and technology issues, as well as security—Russia, France, UK, and even China. Why should the United States, the world's leading economic and military power be seen as some pariah ?

Fortunately, according to the text of the agreement between Mukherji and the Left parties, the operationalisation of the deal will merely “take into account” the committee’s findings and will clearly not be bound by them.

Another Chinese take on the subject:

“the agreement does boost India' s nuclear energy development. According to the agreement, both India and the United States will unfold nuclear energy cooperation in full swing and the United States will provide India with nuclear technology, installations and fuel, and help it establish a strategic reserve of nuclear energy. As a matter of fact, India is extremely short of energy. Electricity shortage has been a big problem that has plagued people' s normal life and sustainable economic development. The civilian nuclear power development will help India greatly ease the power shortage and provide guarantee to a steady economic development.”

Read the whole, if somewhat convoluted comment here People’s Daily Online August 30, 2007

Indo-US nuclear deal: the opposing view

"It is a sobering read (the Indo-US 123 Nuclear Agreement) and tells us much about the administration's thinking. In summary, there isn't much of a deal here at all, India gets what it wants. The agreement not only fails to seek any constraints on India's nuclear weapons program, it goes out of its way to make clear that what goes on in the nuclear weapons program is off the table and not to affect at all the agreement's execution."

writes Ivan Oelrich, the Vice-President for Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Anyone who thinks that India got the short end of the stick in the Indo-US nuclear deal should read his comment in detail here.

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.

Indo-US Nuclear Deal: The last lap

(This has been revised in the past 12 hours)

As readers of this blog know, I have been, and remain, a strong supporter of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Many of my articles of the past two years can be found in this blog archive. I was 100 per cent sure that the US will concede all the major issues—right to reprocess nuclear fuel, accepting the concept of perpetual supply of fuel for reactors in exchange for our placing our civilian reactors under perpetual safeguards, linked to this ensuring that the deal is not automatically held hostage to the consequences of another Indian nuclear test, and the issue of fallback safeguards that would be needed if the IAEA failed to carry out it's duties.

My reasoning is that the US is not motivated by a desire to get a slice of the Indian nuclear power industry pie, or on capping India’s nuclear weapons programme. It based on a strategic calculation that requires a friendly India. This is not because we are ‘good’ and ‘deserving’ or even a democracy, but because our size, economic potential and location makes us just about the only large country that can offset the powerful gravitational pull being exerted by China. Our political ethos, not dissimilar to that of the US and the western world is a bonus. The problem for the US was that not only was India was subject to a host of US technology restrictions, but that most of the history of Indo-US relations was one of the Americans seeking to contain India, in alliance with Pakistan and even China. (see the previous post) You cannot befriend a country you also embargo and contain.

An awareness of the need to change this made the many US concessions possible. As for India, it sees the deal as a huge “confidence building measure” on the part of the Americans, or a token of atonement of the many wrongs they have inflicted on us in the past. India's new breed of realpolitik leaders don't want ritual apologies, they prefer to follow the Chinese style of extracting what you can when the situation is in your favour.

Now India has nothing to complain about the nuclear deal, and everything to celebrate. It's not surprising that on Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs and the Cabinet Committee on Security met jointly and quickly approved of the draft agreement. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji declared that all of India's concerns had been met in the recent round of talks in Washington DC.

Now, the world's sole super-power, one is willing to loosen the tight nuclear embargo it had placed on the civil part of our nuclear programme. The effect of the Indo-US nuclear agreement will be that while India remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the US has agreed to resume nuclear cooperation in trade in the civil nuclear side, even while giving a specific commitment that it will not hamper India's weapons' programme. It has agreed to actively work to persuade the rest of it's cartel, the Nuclear Suppliers Group to do the same.

"It's too good to be true," said a senior official involved in the negotiations who spoke on background to this blogger earlier this week. The US decision has rescued the Indian civil nuclear programme as well, because India lacks natural uranium and its three-stage programme aiming at self-sufficiency through using the Thorium-Uranium cycle was in serious jeopardy. As it is, the American-led embargo had seriously crippled the programme both in terms of size and technology.

Because, say officials who went for the talks, the deal was wide open on all the three counts listed above when the team led by Indian National Security Adviser Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon went to Washington on July 17. There, in addition to the official-level talks, the Indian team leaders held parallel discussions with top US officials, Cheney, Hadley and Rice. By all accounts the talks were extended for a fourth and fifth day because of these discussions and in the end we have a “frozen text”—a draft agreement which, though already approved formally by India, must now be approved by the the US system.

The political push so vital for the agreement came from the very top-- President George W. Bush in the US and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India. Note the key role played by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and US National Security Adviser Steve Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in breaking the log-jam in Washington.

The latest report by one of the agreement’s more knowledgeable and balanced critics Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu indicates that the ‘frozen text’ now with the Indian and US governments has met all the many requirements that were set for it and more.
Already two nuclear scientists, Placid Rodrigues and M.R. Srinivasan who attacked the July 18 Agreement have come out to declare it a success. See this report.

A senior official involved in the negotiations says that the deal meets India's goals because:

1. It places no hindrance on our strategic or military programme. 2. It does not hinder our cherished indigenous three-stage nuclear power programme and finally 3. It is in consonance with all the assurances given by Prime Minister Singh in Parliament.

The senior official says that the agreement now contains “specific language” declaring that the aim of the agreement is not to hinder any “unsafeguarded nuclear activity” on the part of India-- in other words the military part of our programme. In fact he says the deal has ‘no language on nuclear tests’ . While the US is required by it’s law to halt all cooperation with countries that conduct nuclear tests, the Hyde Act has given an exemption that covers the May 1998 tests. While India is aware that another test will have consequences, the Indo-US 123 agreement remains silent on the issue, a fact that tells it's own story.

The ghost of Tarapur

In the frozen agreement according to the senior official, the US has agreed to give India “prior consent” to reprocess US-origin nuclear fuel. This is an issue that had bedeviled the past couple of rounds of talks because, first, the US did not understand India’s need for reprocessing (this is linked to making plutonium to fuel fast-breeder reactors for stage II of India’s power programme). The US prior consent is conditional on India creating a dedicated national facility for reprocessing fuel which will be safeguarded by the IAEA to it’s declared standards on reprocessing, storage, safety and security.

Such a consent was available for the US-supplied Tarapur reactors as well. But when India called for consultations on the issue of reprocessing in the 1970s, the US simply refused to sit down and talk and the result was that India has had to bear the cost of storing the US-origin spent fuel.
To ensure this does not happen the current agreement has a provision which requires consultations to begin within 6 months of the Indian request, and within a year an agreement will be reached.

Cessation of cooperation

Any agreement worth it’s salt must have some way of coping with a breakdown. In this case, the guiding star is again the Tarapur agreement. The US Atomic Energy Act insists that should this happen, it should get back all the equipment and materials supplied. This seems logical, but is impractical. Uprooting a nuclear power plant is simply not possible. The only option is to entomb it. As for materials, especially spent fuel, most suppliers would rather not have it back because of problems of storage.

The current agreement contains an elaborate schema for any “cessation of cooperation” situation. According to the senior official, it will have a “many-layered” process of consultation after the cessation. This will focus on safety and compensation, with US commitment to the “continuous operation of the reactor” of US origin. In other words, the US government will not seek to uproot or halt its’ operation. It could demand the return of US-origin fuel, but only after India was satisfied that it had made up the deficit from alternate sources. Here again the process would not be interminable. The US would be committed to stating what it wants back within a year and compensating India for the return.

What the draft agreement has not given us

The “frozen agreement” does not as yet enable trade in enrichment and reprocessing(ENR) technologies. The US prohibits their export to all countries, but says the senior official, India already has these technologies. What India wants, however, are components but this can only happen through an amendment to the current agreement. Parliament is also bound to question the “prior consent” framework for reprocessing saying that there is always a chance that the US may renege at the last moment. Officials say that the issue will really come up after a decade and more because this presumed that India will, first, have to buy a US reactor, then use it for several years and accumulate sufficient spent fuel for reprocessing. At the same time it would have to build the dedicated facility for reprocessing it. So why hold the agreement hostage to speculative possibility, namely that India will indeed buy a US reactor ?

The Real Prize

India now needs to work out an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and get the approval of the 43-member Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel. This should happen by October or November. Then the draft agreement, the IAEA India-specific Additional Protocol and the NSG's new rules on nuclear trade with India would be together sent to the US Congress and the 123 Agreement would be subjected to an "up or down" vote. This means that there will be no discussion or amendment, simply a vote on whether the Congress approves or disapproves of the agreement.

The NSG is the real prize. The Indo-US Agreement is merely the key that will unlock the global embargo on our programme. When the embargo is lifted, India will have the option of nuclear trade with several countries who are not as finicky as the US on nuclear issues. It is not that they are less committed to non-proliferation and will not insist on stringent safeguards on us, only that they will not have onerous rules of the type listed in the US Atomic Energy Act. Further, and perhaps more important, they have more advanced nuclear power technology-- Russian reactors are cheaper and the French more sophisticated.

Could the US use the NSG to pin India down on issues it has conceded in the ‘123 Agreement’?
Unlikely, say Indian officials, they have tried in the past but failed. Indeed, they are actually obligated by the July 18, 2005 agreement to push India’s case in the NSG. The US will give it in writing to India that it will not press the NSG to cut off cooperation with India, should the Indo-US agreement be terminated in some future date for some unspecified reason.

Domestic fallout

“Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”. You will soon be reading about those who played a sterling role in working out the Indo-US nuclear deal. The actual fact is that barring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, no senior political figure backed the deal openly, though External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji played a key behind-the-scenes role in promoting it. One reason was that many in the ruling coalition did not understand the deal and its implications and some didn’t bother to think about it. Among political parties only Left understood what it meant—the route to closer Indo-US ties—and so opposed it vehemently.

The BJP’s hostile stance is part of its addled post-2004 politics. The opposition of the “retired nuclear scientist” lobby ranged from senility to xenophobia. Many of those involved forgot their own record of incompetence and disservice to the Indian nuclear programme whose true history remains to be written. The mendacity of some of them has been truly astonishing.

And as for our bomb programme....

Those who claim that the deal will undermine our minimum credible deterrent should read the article here written by K. Santhanam, the DRDO scientist who steered the Indian nuclear weapons programme through the 1990s. He says "The accumulated weapons-grade plutonium in about 40 years of operating the CIRUS reactor (40MWt) and the relatively new Dhruv reactor (100MWt) has been estimated to be sufficient for the MCD (Minimum Credible Deterrent)."

It is a Big Deal

We must recognise that the US has done us a favour in lifting the nuclear embargo on India.We are desperately short of natural uranium and technology and the negotiation with the US is the only way in which the doors of the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel, which have been shut to us, will open.

If anyone has alternate suggestions, I will welcome them.

This article was published in Hindustan Times December 13, 2006

Critics of the Indo-US nuclear deal are playing the game with loaded dice, weighted heavily with their anti-Americanism. The condemnation, some positively bilious, has been based on a selective reading of the new US nuclear cooperation law. Any analysis of the deal made, with the US depicted as an ‘enemy’ or ‘hostile’ actor, means that every word or phrase of the new US law can be seen as the imposition of an onerous condition or a hidden trap.

So, efforts by the US to ensure that civil technology is used for the purpose claimed, are viewed as a sinister effort to spy on India’s nuclear technology. Say this much for the Left, they do know their politics well and clearly understand that the key American aim in giving India the extraordinary concession — of ending their 30-year-old successful embargo of our nuclear establishment — is to do with befriending India. And everyone knows that the Left does not want India and the US to be friends.

For 30 years, US laws, accepted by 45 other countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, banned the export of even a light bulb to any Indian nuclear establishment. An agreement that enables India to access nuclear raw material and technology from around the world is, therefore, not an every day event. More so, because it does so without any obligation on India to give up or restrict its nuclear weapons capability.

As for the issue of spies who may come in the guise of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors: the military and civil parts of the nuclear establishment will be physically separated. The military parts will operate out of the Kalpakkam and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) complexes.

The obligations the US seeks are quite legitimate. These are rules and regulations that will assure the US and the NSG that the opening of civil nuclear trade to India will not, in anyway, aid India’s nuclear weapons capability. Considering India defied the world community and tested nuclear weapons in 1998, this is not an unreasonable expectation. Since our hearts are pure and military facilities will be in separate enclaves, there is no reason why we should worry about the intrusiveness of inspections.

What the red and saffron filter does not reveal is that the US has come more than half-way to accommodate India. Leave alone dropping the insistence that India “cap and roll back” its nuclear weapons programme, the US has actually laid the groundwork for intensive collaboration with India in the civil nuclear sphere. For example, much is being made of the fact that the Hyde Act does not mention the issue of reprocessing US-supplied nuclear fuel in India. As of today, the US prohibits this, regardless of the country. But, say officials, the very fact that it has not been mentioned in the legislation is the loophole that a subsequent technical ‘123 Agreement’ can be used to enable this. A clause in the Bill makes India the only country in the world that can have US reprocessing and enrichment technology, albeit conditionally.

Much has been made of annual certificates needed to continue cooperation. Actually on Indian insistence, “certification” has been changed to “assessment”, the difference being that negative reports will not lead to cessation of cooperation. Another claim of US’s bad faith is that it had the NSG inspection laws tightened to target India. G. Balachandran, a long-time analyst of the issue, says that the change in the rules were mooted in the NSG in mid-2004, a year before the Indo-US nuclear deal, and approved by the outfit’s plenary in June 2005.

The opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal need to answer how they propose to meet the deficit of natural uranium that afflicts India’s civil nuclear power programme?

The shortage is not a matter of speculation. The mid-term appraisal document of the Tenth Five Year Plan states this. In July 2005, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, A. Gopalakrishnan, now a vocal critic of the deal, wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly: “at present the DAE (department of atomic energy) is beginning to face a serious shortage of natural uranium, even to fuel the 18 pwhr (pressurised heavy water reactors) currently under operation or construction.”

This is a good place to examine the attitude of some of our retired scientists who are criticising the deal. All of them know how the US-led embargo crippled the Indian nuclear programme. They seem to be inspired by a sense of technological vengeance in insisting that India go it alone and prove its three-stage nuclear plan. This could well be technological hubris. Balachandran says India has just about enough natural uranium to run a 10,000 MW programme, sufficient to trigger the fast-breeder reactor programme using a plutonium-rich fuel to breed more plutonium. “If there are no imports, then everything hangs on the fast breeder reactor,” he says. “If, for some reason, this technology does not perform, we will be stuck at that level.”

The only deal that will satisfy our scientists is one in which the US not only unconditionally gives in to all Indian demands, but also rewrites the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to accommodate India as a nuclear weapons State. This attitude can only be born out of dotage, or a wrenching awareness that their world will be changed forever. Instead of the cloistered institutions they ran with little accountability, India, in the changed circumstances, could well have a vast nuclear establishment with many new actors, including probably private sector companies, both Indian and foreign. Nuclear power research, today, is a cooperative affair, involving several countries and institutions — both private and public — primarily because of the costs associated, as well as a desire to spread the technological risks.

There is one last thought that needs to be addressed. In international relations, all State-to-State relations are between equals. When Prime Ministers and Presidents make joint statements and declarations, this principle operates. The reality is, however, that while all nations are sovereign equals, in the real world, geographic location, economic and military power, and resilience of political institutions create differentials.

It is on this template that we need to examine the Indo-US deal. So, while the July 18, 2005, statement and the PM’s statements in Parliament work on the belief that it is an agreement between sovereign equals, the practical procedures that the two countries work out cannot avoid reflecting the real differential. The US, the world’s largest economy and military power, is also a recognised nuclear weapons State under the NPT; India is a pariah State when it comes to nuclear weapons and technology, as well as a poor country in desperate need of energy.

The US, the lead State in maintaining a global embargo against States that have not signed the NPT, has been remarkably generous with India. Not only has it tacitly accepted India as a nuclear weapons State, it has explicitly agreed to lift its embargo against India’s civil nuclear programme in exchange for assurances that there are no leakages from India’s civil programme to the military. To see this as sinister or demeaning is either obtuse or perverse, or perhaps, a combination of both.