Indo-US nuclear agreement
By Najmuddin A. Shaikh
Dawn

MUCH has already been written and said on the nuclear agreement reached between the United States and India in the Pakistani, Indian and international media. In each case, the focus has been different. Our media comment has focused on what this would mean for the strategic balance in South Asia and why this favourable treatment being accorded to India when Pakistan was a key partner in the battle against terrorism etc.

The Indian coverage has focused on the one hand on what concessions the Indians made in other spheres to get this deal and what sort of controls the US and the IAEA would be able to exercise on what had hitherto been a wholly untrammelled nuclear programme and on the other has offered a stout defence of what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been able to get from the US without compromising the essential independence of India’s nuclear programme.

The western media coverage has focused on the fact that the Bush administration has with this decision driven a coach and four through the non-proliferation regime, particularly the NPT and pointed out the adverse consequences for the current negotiations with Iran and North Korea.

Also highlighted are the American motivation in strengthening India as a counterweight to China whose recent moves on Taiwan and increase in defence expenditures have triggered alarm bells in the Pentagon; the strong opposition the administration would face in Congress to amending American laws to permit such cooperation; the opposition from within the nuclear suppliers group to this move; question marks against how far Indian and US policies on China will coincide; and what would be done with regard to Pakistan and its claim for similar treatment.

From what has appeared, the following dispassionate analysis can be made of the motivations of the parties concerned and its global consequences. The agreement did drive a coach and four through the current nonproliferation regime particularly the NPT but the Bush administration has generally a low regard for formal treaties and regimes, and had bought the view that some nuclear proliferation may even be beneficial. The creation of a counterweight to China in Asia was necessary if the US was to be able to maintain its influence over that continent. Even if Indian and American views on China were not identical there would be Sino-Indian regional rivalry and the Americans would be beneficiaries.

Regarding arguments to be used in Congress, the fact is that on a practical plane, India has nuclear weapon status and this could not be reversed. Letting a theoretical adherence to the NPT stand in the way of the development of the much touted strategic partnership was bad politics. India had a moral claim of sorts on American assistance, since after the passage of the non-proliferation legislation the US had reneged on its agreement to provide low enriched uranium for the US supplied Tarapur reactors. More importantly, India had few indigenous sources of natural uranium and such as did exist, produced uranium at extremely high prices.

Production levels had fallen at most of the Indian power reactors because of the shortage of fuel. While Indian research on extracting fuel from the thorium sands would probably yield positive results after some time, for the foreseeable future India would remain dependent on American and other western sources for its uranium fuel requirements. Moreover, even while India had foresworn unilaterally any further nuclear tests the present agreement would make this a formal binding commitment.

From the Indian perspective negotiations were entered into with the hope — perhaps recognized as vain — that India would secure American endorsement for its entry into the nuclear weapons’ club. Failing that securing access to western civilian nuclear technology while accepting no more by way of safeguards than had been accepted by the Nuclear Club members was acceptable. The need for access to uranium for fuel was desperate if the civilian nuclear programme was to continue.

According to the former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, Mr Srinivasan, the old power reactors had reached 85 per cent of full capacity but had to be downgraded because of shortage of fuel. He maintains that “with larger quantities of uranium available at international prices, which are much lower than Indian prices, the operating costs of our older units will go down”. Even more dramatically an Indian official is reported to have told the BBC that “The truth is we were desperate. We have nuclear fuel to last only till the end of 2006. If this agreement had not come through we might have as well closed down our nuclear reactors and by extension, our nuclear programme”.

There would be a problem in separating the civilian and military nuclear facilities. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has already posed the question of whether such a separation would inhibit India’s ability to decide the nature and size of its nuclear deterrent. The Indians, however, draw comfort from the fact that each nuclear weapon state has negotiated its own language with the IAEA, in the broadly similar safeguards agreements.

An Indian commentator has pointed out that the Chinese safeguard agreement provides that China has only to provide a “list of the facilities” that would come under safeguards, and had the right to “add facilities to or remove facilities from the list as it deems appropriate”, and that it also has the option to “withdraw” materials from the list of facilities under a set of procedures.

A more serious inhibition on the development of a more extensive nuclear deterrent may be the commitment to “continuing India’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing” and “working with the United States for the conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty” (FMCT). The moratorium on testing could be difficult but the Indian calculation may be that it can continue the development of its nuclear weapons through “cold tests” and that in any case, the US itself appeared to be moving towards a resumption of testing and in that case India could hardly be held to its commitment.

On the FMCT, the Indian response probably would be that in so far as the cut-off treaty is concerned it would be many years before this can be concluded and in the meanwhile India can add enough to its already extensive stockpile of fissile material to meet any foreseeable needs.

Reports from Washington suggest that the administration had not consulted Congress before reaching this agreement with India. It is possible that the original intent may have been to meet India’s fuel requirements particularly for the US-supplied Tarapur plant by using the president’s waiver authority and not to seek amendments in domestic legislation but that the Indians insisted that if they were to make binding commitments on safeguards they needed an assurance of durable supply arrangements that could only come after legislative changes.

Will Congress now agree? There is no doubt that the debate will be intense. The non-proliferation lobby in Washington is girding its loins and there are dedicated non-proliferation advocates in Congress, not least among them Senator Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The record, however, suggests that in 1979-80, a period when relations with India were at low ebb and the presidency (President Carter) was particularly weak the administration was able virtually in defiance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, to get a last shipment of enriched uranium to India for the Tarapur reactor. Today, the administration is better placed particularly, given the Republican majority in both houses and the legislators’ obsession with China.

The nuclear suppliers group will, despite the proliferation concerns of the public in Europe and elsewhere, happily go along with the American decision. The nuclear industries of France, the UK, Russia etc. all starved for business from indigenous sources, will all be anxious to vie for orders and will salivate at the thought of India raising its nuclear power production capacity from the current 3310 Mwe to the 275,000 MWe that Mr Srinivasan visualizes as the nuclear industry’s contribution to India’s energy mix in 2052.

Where does this leave Pakistan? A recent decision of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) had approved an energy security plan under which Pakistan would enhance its nuclear power generation from 437-mw to 8,800-mw by 2030. Clearly such an increase is not going to come from indigenous sources even though there is mention in the plan of a project to enhance the capacity of the fabrication capacity of the Pinstech laboratories from 300MWe to 1000MWe.

Assistant Secretary Christina Rocca during her recent visit to Pakistan told journalists that American plans for assisting Pakistan meet its energy needs would, in the nuclear field be a mirror image of what had been done with India. The fact, however, is that once American legislation has been amended, the US would be hard put to deny Pakistan access to civilian nuclear technology. It would probably insist on a longer gestation period so that it could convince itself and the world that Pakistan was a responsible nuclear power.

I would assume that in her conversation with President Musharraf shortly after the conclusion of the Indo-US agreement Secretary Condoleezza Rice may have made the point that, for the moment, Pakistan should not make a demand for similar treatment since this would make it difficult to get congressional approval for changes in the law, but after the changes had been made and Pakistan had made further progress in the battle against internal extremism, the issue could be taken up.

Pakistan should regard it as satisfactory. It will ease the current problems with China on getting Chashma II which can now be more easily grandfathered as predating the Chinese adherence to the NSG guidelines. We have no other immediate problems in the nuclear power generation field nor should we have any insurmountable problems in the future in separating the civilian facilities from the military ones. It would probably be cheaper for us in any case as it is for the Indians to get fuel for our civilian facilities — all fully safeguarded from abroad and leave our limited non-civilian fuel production facilities outside the ambit of safeguards contained in the additional protocol which we, like the Indians, would have to conclude with the IAEA.

This may prove to be an overly optimistic assessment of future developments but even if it is borne out we must recognize that there has now been a concrete manifestation of the new strategic relationship between India and the US.

It has been noted in our media and by analysts in Washington that despite the great interest America is said to have in improving Indo-Pakistan relations, this secured no mention in the joint statement nor was there even a hint that the status India sought internationally would be more easily endorsed if it was seen to be at peace with its neighbours in South Asia. This is a new reality that must be factored into our calculations.