NEW DELHI – After the successful passage last week of two resolutions favoring the India-United States nuclear deal through the foreign relations committees of both chambers of Congress, it appears highly likely that it will clear the full Senate and House of Representatives.
The nuclear agreement is strongly backed by U.S. business groups, the powerful Indian-American community in the U.S., and pro-Israel lobbies influential on Capitol Hill.
But domestic opinion on the deal in India is even more sharply divided than before the U.S. congressional debate. A majority of political parties oppose the agreement as it is being reshaped in the U.S. Indeed, barring the Indian National Congress, which leads the coalition government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, no party has come out strongly in its defense.
This, in part, is because the content of the resolutions passed with strong majorities in the Senate and House committees differs to some extent from what was agreed between Singh and President George W. Bush in July last year and this past March during Bush’s visit to India.
“In part, the growing rift on the deal is also because U.S. legislators have introduced language in resolutions which one-sidedly and exclusively expresses American concerns,” says M.V. Ramana, a physicist and independent nuclear expert based at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore. “Some of that language is in non-binding clauses and in the preamble, and it does not have operational consequences. But it nevertheless offends Indian sensibilities, which are prickly on issues like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which India, like Israel and Pakistan, has not signed.”
The strongest opposition to the nuclear deal comes, at the political level, from the pro-Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which says the agreement is loaded against India and must not be held to bind future governments.
At the expert level, the fiercest opposition comes from former top officials of the Atomic Energy Commission. Thus, two former AEC chairmen Homi Sethna and P.K. Iyengar contend that the deal will cap India’s ability to produce a “minimum credible nuclear deterrent,” open its nuclear facilities to unacceptably intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy (IAEA), and bind India to the U.S. “in perpetuity.”
Sethna says it would be preferable to sign the much-hated NPT, rather than the present deal: “The NPT may be discriminatory, but we will still be allowed to exit whereas in the India-U.S. deal, India will remain bound in perpetuity.” The NPT is a taboo-word in Indian political discourse.
Others too have criticized the deal, but on different grounds. India’s leftist parties, which command respect well in excess of their seven percent representation in Parliament, say the deal is tied to conditions that interfere with India’s foreign policy independence, for instance on Iran. (The House resolution demands in a non-binding section that India join the U.S. in isolating and sanctioning Iran.)
They also maintain that in its present shape, it alters the sequence of steps India is asked to take. For instance, under earlier agreements, India was asked to negotiate special safeguards with the IAEA and get approval from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) after the deal’s congressional ratification. Now, it must do so before ratification. While the Left opposes India’s nuclear weapons, and also further tests, it does not want the U.S. to dictate a unilateral test ban to India.
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, an umbrella group of over 250 organizations, has also opposed the deal primarily because it will legitimize India’s (and America’s) nuclear weapons, and set back the agenda of global nuclear disarmament. “It will also fuel an unhealthy competition between India and Pakistan, which is bitter at the U.S.-India deal,” says Shukla Sen of the CNDP, based in Mumbai.
The CNDP has strongly criticized the nuclear super-hawks of the AEC for making alarmist and exaggerated claims about the deal capping India’s nuclear weapons program.”It will allow India to import uranium and augment its weapons program,” says Sen.
The Manmohan Singh government faces a tough task in answering its domestic critics from the Right and the Left, especially when Parliament opens its session later this month.
“It also faces two overseas challenges,” says Ramana. “One is to get the different resolutions of the Congress’ two chambers ‘reconciled’ in a way that favors India. And the second is to get approval for the deal from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, an informal association of governments that seek to control the spread of nuclear technology.”
In its U.S. lobbying effort, New Delhi is working closely with the American Jewish Committee, a powerful Zionist organization, which is helping it water down some of the stringent language of the congressional resolutions.
Currently, Walter F. Isaacson, director of government and international affairs of the American Jewish Committee, is in New Delhi to hold talks with Indian diplomats, officials, and politicians, “as part of a stock-taking exercise” and to plan future steps.. Isaacson told the media that besides writing letters to congressmen and telephoning them, “our 32 offices in U.S. also contacted the federal representatives in their home constituencies.”
Isaacson has been quoted in The Economic Times daily as saying, “at this point, I am not ready to relax.” The AJC, working closely with the Indian embassy in Washington, will try to influence the two bills’ passage and their “reconciliation.” “Ultimately, the investment will pay off,” Isaacson added.
The NSG may pose a bigger problem than the U.S. Congress if some of its recalcitrant members speak up at its forthcoming meeting in September. Several of its member-states, including China, Japan, the Nordic countries, Brazil, and South Africa, are believed to be uneasy with the India-U.S. deal.
Currently, reports trade journal Nuclear Fuel, the U.S. is working hard on them so that no public disagreement on the deal is expressed. The NSG takes all its decisions by consensus. It is crucial for the U.S. that no disagreement is aired.
Indian diplomats believe that a completely new and unforeseen development has suddenly come to their aid: North Korea’s seven missile tests this week. These have produced consternation and dismay in Japan, the U.S., and South Korea. India could capitalize on this.
Said The Times of India daily on this issue: “India should quietly relish the U.S. and Japanese discomfiture – since these were the first missile tests by North Korea, after 1998, it should be a kind of security awakening for Japan.” The Korean tests, the paper said on Thursday, could also serve to highlight the North Korea-Pakistan nuclear-missile links because “a number of Pakistani missiles owe their origin to Pyongyang.”
The paper’s reporter expressed the hope that this development might “contribute to a more mature Japanese outlook” on the whole issue. “As India courts Japan for support in the NSG in the face of Japan’s nuclear homilies, India, said sources, would hope Tokyo can take a more ‘reasoned’ view of the nuclear debate that rages in this part of the world.” This could help tilt Japan in India’s favor at the NSG.
(Inter Press Service)
