New Delhi
18 July 2006
The outcome of the negotiations on the "123 Agreement" remains
uncertain as India and the United States were still discussing outstanding issues like
reprocessing and assured supply of fuel. What is certain, though, is Washington will
engage in "straight forward, cold-blooded calculation of [US] national security interests"
before deciding one way or another, according to India-born US analyst Dr Ashley Tellis.
Till recently, he was senior adviser to US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
Nicholas Burns.
"The challenge is how to make the 123 Agreement relate to the new world order and bring
it up to speed. Reprocessing is currently being discussed. [We] don't know the outcome.
Hopefully it will be resolved," he said on the sidelines of his address on "One Year later:
Does US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Matter?". The Confederation of Indian Industry
(CII) organised the session to mark the anniversary of July 18, 2005 Joint Statement and
General Electric (GE) sponsored it.
Dr Tellis said that by signing up for the nuclear deal, it was certain that New Delhi has
determined that its plutonium-based deterrent "suffices". He reiterated that the deal will
terminate if India conducts nuclear tests. "[This] is already a portion of the US law that
cannot be amended. The exercise of national secuity waiver by the President is not
compromised by the nuclear deal, the President can ask the Congress to suspend
application of sanctions," he observed.
However, certain analysts sitting in the audience observed that the nuclear deal placed
constraints on India's strategic programme and that nuclear tests may be needed to be
conducted in the future for the purpose of harnessing thermonuclear and boosted fission
weapons and developing India's deterrent. Questions were also raised about the efficacy
of the non-proliferation regime and about Washington's motivation to use the deal to
rescue its moribund nuclear industry.
Earlier, in his address, he said the nuclear deal offered an "alternative" to India's three-
stage nuclear programme. "If uranium is available to India for all time to come, should
India pursue the three-stage (nuclear) programme?" he wondered aloud. "Absence of
uranium scarcity undermines the viability of the three-stage programme", he said before
hastening to add that the nuclear deal "could undermine [New Delhi's] three-stage
programme but it does not do so necessarily".
No comments:
Post a Comment