On nuke deal, India negotiated with itself too

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, July 22, 2007 : The thrust and parry of negotiations that ended with the US acknowledging India as the newest member of the exclusive nuclear club last week, had as much to do with differences within the Indian establishment that were resolved, side by side, even as the Indian team negotiated with the US.

But first, another real gain for the Indian side, apart from reprocessing rights and permanent fuel assurances, from the Washington talks last week : The nuclear deal states that nothing in it will impede India’s strategic programme. It accepts that the agreement is only about assisting India to develop a civil nuclear energy programme.

That politically loaded phrase will bail out Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he unveils the nuclear deal during the Parliament session. The PM has been insisting again and again, that Delhi will never compromise its nuclear sovereignty. Now, none other than the Bush administration has conceded the point.

As for the delicately worded compromise on assurances for India’s nuclear fuel reserve, the US has told India that in case India tests in the hypothetical future – and the US law on ceasing assistance to a non-NPT country kicks in – the US will ensure that other countries, like Russia or France, will step in to take America’s place.

But back to the unwritten story of the Indo-US nuclear deal, which is, that until National Security Adviser M K Narayanan virtually adopted the nuclear deal as his own, Atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar held a real veto over every round of talks.

So much so that Kakodkar, travelling with Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon to Washington last week, did not participate in a single meeting with the top political bosses of the Bush administration – whether national security adviser Steve Hadley, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice or vice-president Dick Cheney.

Instead, like Mohammed, he sat in his hotel room all through those four nerve-wracking days, waiting for the mountain to come to him.

In this case, there were three men on the mountain : Narayanan, India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen and Menon.

So every two or three hours, according to sources close to the talks, this ``high command’’, along with Kakodkar, met to go over the latest initiative or offer, strategy or compromise.

Over every conversation, dialogue or negotiation with the Americans, then, Kakodkar’s invisible presence hung over the room, as if warning his own compatriots not to give in too easily.

Significantly, it was Narayanan who hit upon the idea of taking Narayanan by the hand with him for this final Washington round of talks.

Narayanan knew that with time running out for the Bush administration, this was going to be a now-or-never last round in Washington. If India was to become the world’s sixth nuclear power in all but name, then Kakodkar would have to be tamed in the national interest.

So as the Indian team, at various levels, negotiated with their counterparts, they insisted on the one unusual phrase : Nothing in this agreement will impede India’s strategic programme. It was a phrase that gladdened Kakodkar’s heart.

When the story of the Indo-US deal is finally written and Steve Hadley wins the vote for being the man of the hour on the US side, Narayanan will surely win the medal for the Indian team hands down.

Finally, it was the Narayanan-Hadley two-step that finally pulled it off. On Wednesday, July 20, during their one-on-one meeting, Hadley agreed to give reprocessing rights in exchange for Narayanan’s offer on the additionally safeguarded storage facility.

That afternoon they were joined by America’s top diplomat Nicholas Burns and Menon for lunch. For the rest of the day and well into the night, over ten straight hours, India’s S. Jaishanker and US’ Richard Stratford went through the draft text with a fine toothcomb.

The next day, en route to his meeting with Cheney, Narayanan and Hadley met again to thrash out a delicate compromise on permanent guarantees for India’s fuel reserve.

ENDS