New Delhi
15 May 2007
New Delhi has accommodated Washington's desire and plunged
headlong into talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency for signing a safeguards
agreement in spite of the Left parties's demand that the pact with IAEA should follow the
123 Agreement being negotiated by India and the United States.
"[India is] talking to the IAEA already," a source said. "The India-US bilateral agreement,
India-IAEA safeguards agreement and the US's consultations with the Nuclear Suppliers
Group are separate jobs but they are all tied to one another ... all three together ... can't
do one without the other," he asserted.
The CPI(M) politburo said on May 4 that the 123 agreement should not be negotiated with
the US without clarifying all the issues which were raised in the Prime Minister's
statement in Parliament. "[It] is imperative that the government make a statement in
Parliament [about the] status of the negotiations," it read.
The Left parties also felt that negotiating a safeguards agreement and the 123 Agreement
concurrently would not be prudent and the government must therefore adhere to the
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's assurances to Parliament on the sequencing of steps
proposed to be taken by India.
The source pointed out that the negotiations between US Under Secretary of State for
Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon in New Delhi
next week needed to be within the parameters agreed to by both sides in the July 2005
Joint Statement and the March 2006 Separation Plan.
"We are ready to do it," he said but qualified by saying that "it takes two hands to clap."
He added: "It is important [it is done] as quickly as possible. There is a basic
understanding [but] the question is how to reduce it to a legal text ... [we] know each
other's limiting factors and there are red lines for us."
Those "red lines", he explained, were that there should be no restrictions on India's
strategic programme and the indigenous three-stage programme would be kept out of the
ambit of negotiations. "We need to keep developing that [so] our right to reprocess fuel
and our own material becomes very important."
He also insisted that India could not "close testing options" or accept voluntary
moratorium on testing as a binding, legal commitment. "[India will seek to] insulate fuel
cycle ... conceptually isolate the international cooperation side ... it is doable ... within
that there is a lot of room," he hastened to add.
The source chose to describe the nuclear deal as "a 40-year-leap" and for that reason it
was "a (political) judgment call". He claimed that scientists were used to seeing
everything in black or white and some of them in India were opposed to the deal. "Now
they want (India) to do it on right terms," he said about their opinion today.
He maintained that there was "much more to this relationship" between India and the US
than the 123 Agreement. "Strategically speaking, it is unprecedented. The 123 Agreement
is neither good or bad until you see the agreement ... in any case after the agreement
both sides will have obligations and rights," he added.
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