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.

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.