India for nuclear deal in spirit, if not in the letter
Contrary to its stated position, India is willing to accept any proposal worked around the spirit, reports Manoj Joshi.
Contrary to its stated position that it sees the July 18, 2005 joint statement as an immutable template on which the Indo-US nuclear agreement will be worked out, the Government of India is willing to accept any proposal worked around the spirit, rather than the letter, of the statement. A senior Union minister familiar with the issue told HT that if the reconciled US Congress legislation avoided some of India’s deal-breaker concerns, the Indian government will be ready to take some more political flak to push the deal. The minister did not want to be named, citing abundant caution because the Parliament is in session.
An External Affairs Ministry official said it was up to the political class to work out what India’s position ought to be if it does not get a hundred per cent of what it wants in the US legislation. “The insistence (of some media critics) that India must insist on all, or nothing, is designed to drive us to the position of taking nothing,” lamented the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Defence analyst K Subrahmanyam seconded this view and said the whole issue had been perverted by such critics. He said the legislation currently being worked out has nothing to do with India, “it is a legislation that will enable the US executive to arrive at a nuclear cooperation accord (123 agreement) with India”. New Delhi needs to take a hard look at the 123 agreement that will be worked out by the US administration after the Senate and House bills are reconciled, and then decide whether it wants to sign up on it or not. It will be premature, he insisted, to take a position at this stage.
A senior official at the Prime Minister’s Office, who spoke on a background basis, said that though the US legislation is a very important, even “vital”, benchmark in the Indo-US process, it is not the only one. In addition to this bilateral track, there was a multilateral one which would seek to get the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to endorse civil nuclear cooperation with India, as well as an agreement on India-specific safeguards that would be worked out with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The key, the official said, was to keep the eye on the ball, and in this case, the agreement with the 45- member NSG. As Subrahmanyam explained, the Chinese, Russians and French have decided that the US take the lead in dealing with India on this issue, but once the deal with the US goes through and the NSG is on board, “we don’t have to buy a single US reactor or source nuclear material from them, thereby avoid any uncomfortable conditions they put on us”.
The message, he said, is to grin and bear peripheral conditions relating to Iran in the short run and press on with getting the NSG to lift sanctions on India.Through this process, India will be able to get ahead of any restricitive US measures and enlarge its options.
With the reconciliation process still taking place, it is difficult to predict the shape of the final legislation. “We’d like to get the bill as (if) we wrote it,” said the foreign ministry official, “but that is not likely to happen.” So, India must be prepared to be hard-headed and take what it can in the bilateral arrangement, and make up the slack through the multilateral process.
Email Manish Joshi: manojjoshi@hindustantimes.com