Thread: Walker's World: India's nuke deal falters

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Walker's World: India's nuke deal falters

By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor Emeritus


MUMBAI, March 6 (UPI) -- There is a serious problem with this week's detailed negotiations on the nuclear cooperation agreement between India and the United States, whose success is essential if the Bush administration's rhetoric about "strategic partnership" with India is to become a reality.

Among the diplomats and officials in Washington and New Delhi, the pact is seen as a done deal, with only a few technical issues left to be resolved and critics of the agreement are dismissed as "isolated voices" and "a handful of disaffected scientists."

But in a leafy suburb of Mumbai, sitting over cups of tea in his living room, the grand old man of India's nuclear scientists told United Press International that he was firmly opposed to the deal, and that as currently drafted it would fatally compromise Indian sovereignty over its nuclear program.

"I do not think I am a lone disaffected scientist," said Peter Ayengar, former chairman of India's Atomic Energy commission. "Every other living former chairman of the Commission agrees with me. Indeed, I do not know any Indian nuclear scientists who do not agree."

"As currently drafted, the agreement would force us to stop re-processing nuclear fuel, something we have been doing for thirty years. It would terminate our strategic program (India's nuclear weapons program) by exposing us to sanctions if we conducted nuclear tests. And it puts impossible barriers in our path to ongoing and future research, including our well-developed programs for fast-breeder reactors and to use thorium rather than uranium as a nuclear fuel," he added.

"By saying that India shall not re-process fuel and not develop the fast-breeder reactors, this deal undermines our ability to produce energy in the future when uranium runs out," Ayengar went on. "This is a question of national sovereignty, of India's right and ability to decide such things for ourselves."

Ayengar could speak out because he is retired. Other Indian nuclear scientists who are still serving, who spoke to UPI off the record because of a gag order issued by the Indian government, agreed with his objections to the deal. Some went further, claiming "we believe the real U.S. motive is to take control over India's nuclear capabilities."

The deal began as a way to allow India legal access to U.S. nuclear technology and to uranium fuel for its nuclear power stations. This required India to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international control system, which India has for 40 years refused to do. In the initial agreement of July 2005, the Bush administration thought it had met India's concerns by allowing India to separate its military from its civilian reactors, and to limit the intrusive inspection regime to the civilian sector.

As then written, Ayengar thought the deal might be acceptable. But by the time it had gone through the U.S. Congress, he told UPI, "the terms had been substantially rewritten. It is no longer a partnership agreement between India and the United States but a non-proliferation mechanism that puts us in the corner."

The opposition of Ayengar and other nuclear scientists has thrown up formidable political hurdles to the deal in India's Parliament. Leftist members of the governing coalition are against it from a deep-rooted suspicion of U.S. policies in general, while the conservative and nationalist opposition parties oppose it for compromising Indian sovereignty.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backs the deal for three main reasons. First, it ends India's status as a nuclear pariah by bringing it within the NPT system. Second, this means that India can in future legally import uranium as fuel for its reactors. (Ayengar confirmed that this had not been much of a problem in the past, and that he had been able to acquire uranium from China.) Third, it opens the way for India to start exporting its nuclear power technology and to sell nuclear power stations into what looks to be a booming future market.

India's newest reactor, the 220-Megawatt pressurized heavy water reactor called the Kaiga 3, went critical last week and will start delivering power later this month. Anil Kakodkar, current chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, says the extraordinary low costs and the short 5-year construction time "has set a new international benchmark."

India's Nuclear Power Corporation claims that it can build export versions of Kaiga 3 for "less than half the current international average cost of $1,500 per installed Kilowatt." Indian media reports suggest that initial negotiations have begun for export sales to Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

After detailed talks last week between Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, American officials claimed they saw no real problem in drafting an agreement that would satisfy India -- that it would be guaranteed future uranium supplies and allowed to conduct nuclear tests. But both Indian and U.S. negotiators told reporters the issue of India's right to re-process spent nuclear fuel "would be the toughest nut to crack" and would probably require "political intervention at the highest level."

There is no doubt that both governments want the deal to succeed, primarily as a symbol of the new strategic friendship of India and the U.S. This is rooted in the way that each country feels the need for support as the world's two largest democracies confront the challenge of China's dramatic rise in economic and military potential, a challenge that was emphasized this week with China's announcement of another 18 percent increase in its military budget.

The question for Ayengar and India's nuclear scientists is whether the price the Americans are now demanding is too high.

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Is the price demanded by the Americans too high? What will happen if India's demand to be allowed to reprocess spent fuel is is denied? Could we walk out of the deal, and still supply nuclear reactors to other countries?