Indo-US nuclear deal: Disturbing fallout

The agreement legitimises India's nuclear status and effectively embraces India as what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls 'a full member of the new nuclear world order'. It ends India's status as a nuclear pariah for over 30 years for having tested a nuclear device in1974 and exploding tests at Pokhran in1998 in contravention of rules of NPT, a treaty adopted in 1968 --endorsed by 188 countries and rejected by four countries, including India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. The agreement marks a transition of India from being a regional power to a global leader implementing the US offer last year to 'help India become a great power in the 21st century'.

The agreement needs to be studied, warts and all. The warts are bound to embrace weapons development. What is important to note is the leeway in the agreement, if any, without adequate safeguards or guarantee against transfer of nuclear technology and fuel from the civilian to military nuclear facilities. The agreement undeniably gives India strategic weight and potential. The supply of nuclear fuel, could free up India's existing fission material production capacity, enabling it to be used to expand nuclear weapons arsenal. According to experts, India will enhance its capability to produce close to 50 atom bombs a year from its present capacity to produce 6-10 bombs a year. The agreement, as it seems, will not reduce proliferation of nuclear weapons but exacerbate the dreadful march of nuclear arms race towards inevitable holocaust.

The deal blows a hole in the NPT and bends its rules which explicitly prohibits supply of nuclear technology to any nation which is not a signatory to NPT. It harms efforts to curb spread of nuclear weapons. Bush has pushed over a nuclear domino effect on signatories to NPT to review why they should honour a document which a superpower no longer respects. Morocco, Egypt, Venezuela and Japan are known to have nuclear ambitions. But Bush's double standard denying Iran and North Korea of nuclear programmes for stated peaceful purpose of energy supply is well known. Israel whose interests are locked in impassioned coitus with US interests is believed to possess 200 nuclear warheads. The agreement is about breaking rules and expecting others to abide by them. It sends a message that United States will withhold nuclear technology from countries it dislikes.

Bush has sullied everything noble about America by walking out of International Criminal Court and Kyoto Protocol on global warming, abrogating Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, refusing to ratify Nuclear Test Ban ( CTBT) Treaty and land mines ban convention. Even during the cold war period America sustained a core of nuclear arms principles for several decades. But now it has explored a range of nuclear weapons concepts including Star War Missile Defense. Nuclear disarmament has quietly disappeared from the vocabulary of Bush Administration. A recent statement by Linton Brooks, the head of National Nuclear Security and Administration signalled an apparent abandonment of the goal of nuclear disarmament when he said 'the US will for the foreseeable future need to retain both nuclear forces and the capability to sustain and modernize those forces'.

United States views India, the largest democratic and rising economic power with a huge 300 million middle class vibrant market, as an evolving US ally to serve its geo-strategic and economic interests and the nuclear deal is central to that vision. Indo-US strategic relationship is being forged increasingly by deepening defense ties between the two countries, reflected in the 10-year defence cooperation agreement signed last June when defence minister Pranab Mukherjee visited Washington. Joint military exercises are now a routine matter involving growing sophistication, complemented by defence procurements. Major India US defense deal involving advanced war planes and other high tech arms in the area of combat aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft and naval vessels are in the offing. A Pentagon statement issued on the eve of Bush visit said that United States was prepared to sell Lockheed Martin F16 and Boeing F18 jet fighters to India.

The nuclear deal which is motivated by American global agenda of the war on terror, a new balance of power in Asia by counterbalancing growing economic and military might of China and isolating Iran, reflects profound indifference to security concerns of Pakistan. When asked by journalists if the United States would respond positively to similar request for nuclear technology by Pakistan, Bush dismissed the question by saying that the two countries had 'different needs and different histories'. The secretary of state Condoleeza Rice was more candid and blunt when she said that United States had 'concerns' about non-proliferation record of Pakistan perhaps meaning Pakistan nuclear scientist AQ Khan's alleged sale of nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Bush brushed aside suggestion of US mediation on Kashmir and expressed unhappiness about Pakistan's performance in not doing enough to nab Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Jawahiri.

China voiced a note of caution about the deal when it said New Delhi and Washington must follow global nuclear non-proliferation regime and the obligation undertaken by all countries.

India has compromised with independence of its foreign policy when its reaction to US aggression in Iraq was mute. Prodded by America, India voted twice against Iran in IAEA Board meeting in Vienna. Moni Sankar Ayer, the most dynamic petroleum minister of India, was stripped of his portfolio apparently under US pressure as he was pursuing energy cooperation in Asia including Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline and a hydrocarbon grid stretching all the way from Ukraine to Japan. By embracing America India has enhanced its military prowess. India's infatuation with neo liberal market economy since 1991 has gained so called high economic growth which has bred vulgar consumerism. But India has lost its glorious past of moral high purpose and soaring idealism of Gandhi and Nehru who refused to trade political allegiance for economic benefits and espoused the virtues of non-violence and non-alignment, simplicity, love and compassion. There was courage and honour in rags but now there is timidity and acquiescence in riches. Mahatma Gandhi truly said 'How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from a man'

Abdul Hannan is a former press counsellor, Bangladesh UN Mission in New York.