JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, September 4, 2007 : The arrest, over the weekend, by Bangladesh’s army-backed government, of HUJI activist Abu Hamza, a close aide of the chief alleged suspect of the Hyderabad blasts Shahid Bilal, signals Dhaka’s keenness to maintain good relations with Delhi.
Highly placed sources from Bangladesh told `The Telegraph’ that the Bangladeshi intelligence agencies, upon watching the blasts in Hyderabad, decided to sweep their own underground for any clues to the blast.
This was done even without any formal communication from Delhi, requesting either information or action, the Bangladeshi sources said.
That is how the Bangladeshi operatives picked up Abu Hamza in Dhaka, after his connections with Shahid Bilal were confirmed.
It isn’t clear yet what the Bangladeshis are intending to do with Abu Hamza, whether they’re going to hand him to India or not.
But clearly, the Army-backed government of Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed, acutely sensitive about Indian allegations that Bangladesh remains a hotbed of cross-border terrorists, wants to send another signal to Delhi that he is keen on opening a new chapter in bilateral relations.
The arrest of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, coinciding with the arrest of Abu Hamza, is intended to send a second message : While Khaleda’s BNP government may have deliberately taken an anti-Indian position, the Army-backed government of Fakhruddin Ahmed today wants to break with the past.
In fact, Dhaka is believed to have kept Delhi completely updated about its plans, including warning Delhi about its intentions to arrest both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, even before the events took place.
The Army-backed government has insisted that it is only ``cleansing society’’, which is why both Khaleda Zia’s sons are also now in jail, accused of graft and money-laundering.
Hours after Khaleda moved to Dhaka jail, where she has former Bangladesh PM and Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina for company, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission sued Hasina for taking Taka 3 crore as bribe.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh army chief Moeen U. Ahmed’s visit to India continues to be postponed, ostensibly because of the flood situation in that country, but also because he wants to remain closely in touch with developments at home.
Meanwhile, Delhi is keeping a close eye on the split in Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which took place hours before she was packed off to jail over the weekend.
Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, the sacked deputy leader of the BNP, is a former Communist and played an active role as a ``muktijodda’’ or ``freedom-fighter’’ in Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1981.
Bhuiyan has termed his sacking ``unconstitutional,’’ but Bangladeshi observers are already distinguishing between the ``old’’ and the ``new’’ BNP.
Ashraf Hossain, a BNP leader sacked along with Bhuiyan, told AFP that ``Our main crime was that we said we would resist dynastic politics. We wanted to get rid of the corrupt leaders within the party.’’
Both Khaleda and Hasina face at least seven years in jail if the evidence of graft is proved.
ENDS
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Ronen referred to Privileges committee
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, September 1, 2007 : India’s ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, may find himself in a thicker soup than he anticipated over his ``headless chicken’’ remarks, with Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee referring the matter to the Privileges Committee of Parliament on Friday.
This is the first time ever that an ambassador of India, whether career diplomat or political appointee, has become a subject of interest for the Privileges committee, which is tasked with maintaining decorum and propriety of all members of parliament.
In the middle of the stormy debate sparked off by the civilian nuclear deal, ambassador Sen had been quoted as saying in an interview : ``Why do you have all this running around like headless chickens, looking for a comment here or comment there, and these little storms in a tea-cup.’’
As Parliament erupted in dismay, Sen offered an ``unqualified apology’’ for his ``tactless remarks,’’ saying he had never referred to MPs, but to his media friends.
But parliamentarians across the ideological divide, BJP MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra and CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta were unmoved, moving privilege notices against Sen last week.
Apart from the ``headless chickens’’ comment, Sen had also commented on the nuclear deal even before it had been debated in the House, further exacerbating the situation, several MPs said.
Whether or not Sen will now be summoned to the parliamentary bar will be up to the 15-member Privileges committee to decide. Alternatively, the committee could close the matter if it felt the ambassador was truly sorry.
But the fact that the Speaker has decided to pursue the matter, even after receiving a reply from the Ministry of External Affairs last week, attests to the seriousness of the matter.
The Lok Sabha secretariat had written to the MEA seeking clarification of Sen’s remarks in an interview with a website, and the MEA had sent the case file quickly back, along with an unqualified apology by ambassador Sen.
ENDS
New Delhi, September 1, 2007 : India’s ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, may find himself in a thicker soup than he anticipated over his ``headless chicken’’ remarks, with Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee referring the matter to the Privileges Committee of Parliament on Friday.
This is the first time ever that an ambassador of India, whether career diplomat or political appointee, has become a subject of interest for the Privileges committee, which is tasked with maintaining decorum and propriety of all members of parliament.
In the middle of the stormy debate sparked off by the civilian nuclear deal, ambassador Sen had been quoted as saying in an interview : ``Why do you have all this running around like headless chickens, looking for a comment here or comment there, and these little storms in a tea-cup.’’
As Parliament erupted in dismay, Sen offered an ``unqualified apology’’ for his ``tactless remarks,’’ saying he had never referred to MPs, but to his media friends.
But parliamentarians across the ideological divide, BJP MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra and CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta were unmoved, moving privilege notices against Sen last week.
Apart from the ``headless chickens’’ comment, Sen had also commented on the nuclear deal even before it had been debated in the House, further exacerbating the situation, several MPs said.
Whether or not Sen will now be summoned to the parliamentary bar will be up to the 15-member Privileges committee to decide. Alternatively, the committee could close the matter if it felt the ambassador was truly sorry.
But the fact that the Speaker has decided to pursue the matter, even after receiving a reply from the Ministry of External Affairs last week, attests to the seriousness of the matter.
The Lok Sabha secretariat had written to the MEA seeking clarification of Sen’s remarks in an interview with a website, and the MEA had sent the case file quickly back, along with an unqualified apology by ambassador Sen.
ENDS
PM dedicates Tarapur reactors, won't back down on nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 31, 2007 : Buoyed by the promise of the Congress party veering around to keeping the faith over the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today showed no signs of backing down as he dedicated two Tarapur nuclear reactors to the nation.
In fact, the PM in his speech, pretty much set out a schedule for India to follow that would put the 123 agreement on course to taking the next steps at the IAEA, and onwards to a waiver at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
``We need to pave the way for India to benefit from nuclear commerce without restrictions,’’ the PM said, adding, ``Once these and other steps are taken, India can commence civil nuclear cooperation with all the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.’’
It almost seemed as if the sound and fury of the last three weeks, his government teetering in the balance as it debated the onslaught of the Left parties over the nuclear deal, was yesterday’s nightmare.
A renewed challenge to the Left parties was also back.
``Our international cooperation… cannot become effective until the Nuclear Suppliers Group adapts its guidelines to enable nuclear commerce with India. The NSG itself has made it clear that they will not do so till the India-specific Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA is finalized,’’ the PM said.
Back in Delhi, senior members of the Congress party admitted that if the committee, set up yesterday to placate the Left parties, did not succeed in its mandate by the end of September, the party was ``ready to face all consequences.’’
One senior party leader went as far as to say that ``setting up the committee did not mean that the Congress was ready to put the nuclear deal on hold.’’
However, Congress leaders also insisted that they had not yet taken the political call necessary for soldiering on alone.
In Tarapur, meanwhile, with National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar listening, an unruffled PM spoke about the critical need to harness nuclear energy towards the sustenance of 9 per cent growth.
That is why, he pointed out, even as India pursued the three-stage fuel cycle which would give the country nearly unlimited power, it was imperative to augment national capabilities from ``elsewhere.’’
``We must take decisive steps to remove the uncertainties that result from shortfall in fuel supplies to avoid disruptions in our nuclear power production programme,’’ the PM said.
At the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre training school, he could not resist a jab at the Left’s opposition as he paid full tribute to all those scientists and engineers who had laid the ``building blocks of self-reliance’’ in nuclear science and technology.
Then he chose the one Mahatma Gandhi quote to deliver another verbal blow to all those seeking to deny greater contact with the western word :
``I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Increasingly, official sources said, the government was coming around to the view that it could not risk postponing the operationalisation of the nuclear deal.
The only likely concession to the end October-early November IAEA deadline is that Delhi will negotiate the India-specific agreement with the IAEA, but not sign it at this point.
Armed with the frozen text of the India agreement, US diplomats said they would readily call for an emergency plenary session of the NSG by end-November. After the NSG gave its waiver, the US administration would need another month to wrap up documentation and submit it to the US Congress by mid-January 2008.
Since the US Congress usually demanded a 90-day ``cooling period’’ to study all proposed legislation, that would take the ``up-down’’ (yes-no) vote for the 123 agreement into April 2008.
``April would be the absolutely latest deadline, after which the US election would be in full swing,’’ one diplomat said.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 31, 2007 : Buoyed by the promise of the Congress party veering around to keeping the faith over the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today showed no signs of backing down as he dedicated two Tarapur nuclear reactors to the nation.
In fact, the PM in his speech, pretty much set out a schedule for India to follow that would put the 123 agreement on course to taking the next steps at the IAEA, and onwards to a waiver at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
``We need to pave the way for India to benefit from nuclear commerce without restrictions,’’ the PM said, adding, ``Once these and other steps are taken, India can commence civil nuclear cooperation with all the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.’’
It almost seemed as if the sound and fury of the last three weeks, his government teetering in the balance as it debated the onslaught of the Left parties over the nuclear deal, was yesterday’s nightmare.
A renewed challenge to the Left parties was also back.
``Our international cooperation… cannot become effective until the Nuclear Suppliers Group adapts its guidelines to enable nuclear commerce with India. The NSG itself has made it clear that they will not do so till the India-specific Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA is finalized,’’ the PM said.
Back in Delhi, senior members of the Congress party admitted that if the committee, set up yesterday to placate the Left parties, did not succeed in its mandate by the end of September, the party was ``ready to face all consequences.’’
One senior party leader went as far as to say that ``setting up the committee did not mean that the Congress was ready to put the nuclear deal on hold.’’
However, Congress leaders also insisted that they had not yet taken the political call necessary for soldiering on alone.
In Tarapur, meanwhile, with National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar listening, an unruffled PM spoke about the critical need to harness nuclear energy towards the sustenance of 9 per cent growth.
That is why, he pointed out, even as India pursued the three-stage fuel cycle which would give the country nearly unlimited power, it was imperative to augment national capabilities from ``elsewhere.’’
``We must take decisive steps to remove the uncertainties that result from shortfall in fuel supplies to avoid disruptions in our nuclear power production programme,’’ the PM said.
At the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre training school, he could not resist a jab at the Left’s opposition as he paid full tribute to all those scientists and engineers who had laid the ``building blocks of self-reliance’’ in nuclear science and technology.
Then he chose the one Mahatma Gandhi quote to deliver another verbal blow to all those seeking to deny greater contact with the western word :
``I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Increasingly, official sources said, the government was coming around to the view that it could not risk postponing the operationalisation of the nuclear deal.
The only likely concession to the end October-early November IAEA deadline is that Delhi will negotiate the India-specific agreement with the IAEA, but not sign it at this point.
Armed with the frozen text of the India agreement, US diplomats said they would readily call for an emergency plenary session of the NSG by end-November. After the NSG gave its waiver, the US administration would need another month to wrap up documentation and submit it to the US Congress by mid-January 2008.
Since the US Congress usually demanded a 90-day ``cooling period’’ to study all proposed legislation, that would take the ``up-down’’ (yes-no) vote for the 123 agreement into April 2008.
``April would be the absolutely latest deadline, after which the US election would be in full swing,’’ one diplomat said.
ENDS
In face of critics, China wants non-pro order to remain strong
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 31, 2007 : China is closely watching the ``very fierce’’ debate within India over the Indo-US nuclear deal, but has so far taken a very cautious view on the matter, largely because of its complicated nature, China’s ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said here today.
Speaking to a group of journalists at the Indian Women’s Press Corps in the capital, Ambassador Sun said : ``China does not want the Indo-US nuclear deal to weaken the non-proliferation regime, that is our concern.’’
That is why, he added, the Chinese government had so far not reacted formally on the deal, but preferred to take a ``very cautious position’’ on it.
Speaking for the first time since the 123 agreement became public, the Chinese envoy frankly admitted he was sometimes taken aback at the references to China being a factor in the domestic opposition to the nuclear deal, but said he ``understood’’ the Indian media’s reactions.
``No,’’ he said, ``I am not hurt by the Indian media’s comments (on China backing the Left parties), but I understand it. Perhaps the western media perception still stands in the way of our two countries understanding each other.’’
Clearly, as the Indian media factors in China in the domestic debate currently raging over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Chinese government looks like it wants to reach out and dispel the impression that it is seeking to limit India’s growing power.
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, in a highly unusual gesture last week, gave the departing PTI correspondent from China an unscheduled interview, where he spoke at length about the potential and reality of Asia’s greatest civilizations, India and China.
Ambassador Sun spoke in much the same tone in today’s interaction with journalists, telling the story about the time Prime Minister Wen told him to report back as often as possible, ``about what we can learn from India.’’
The Chinese ambassador said he was sending reports about every conceivable aspect of Indian life back home to Beijing, precisely because there was so much to learn from this country.
In a lighter vein, Ambassador Sun pointed out that India and the US were always talking about the fact that they are the largest and oldest democracies in the world, but China was hardly lagging behind.
``Both of you, India and the US, say that you are democracies. We think we are also a democracy, only with a different style. Both in quantity and quality, China has a very good relationship with the US,’’ he said spiritedly.
``In fact, there are more American companies in China than Indian. We eat more Macdonalds hamburgers and wear more blue jeans,’’ the Chinese ambassador added.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 31, 2007 : China is closely watching the ``very fierce’’ debate within India over the Indo-US nuclear deal, but has so far taken a very cautious view on the matter, largely because of its complicated nature, China’s ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said here today.
Speaking to a group of journalists at the Indian Women’s Press Corps in the capital, Ambassador Sun said : ``China does not want the Indo-US nuclear deal to weaken the non-proliferation regime, that is our concern.’’
That is why, he added, the Chinese government had so far not reacted formally on the deal, but preferred to take a ``very cautious position’’ on it.
Speaking for the first time since the 123 agreement became public, the Chinese envoy frankly admitted he was sometimes taken aback at the references to China being a factor in the domestic opposition to the nuclear deal, but said he ``understood’’ the Indian media’s reactions.
``No,’’ he said, ``I am not hurt by the Indian media’s comments (on China backing the Left parties), but I understand it. Perhaps the western media perception still stands in the way of our two countries understanding each other.’’
Clearly, as the Indian media factors in China in the domestic debate currently raging over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Chinese government looks like it wants to reach out and dispel the impression that it is seeking to limit India’s growing power.
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, in a highly unusual gesture last week, gave the departing PTI correspondent from China an unscheduled interview, where he spoke at length about the potential and reality of Asia’s greatest civilizations, India and China.
Ambassador Sun spoke in much the same tone in today’s interaction with journalists, telling the story about the time Prime Minister Wen told him to report back as often as possible, ``about what we can learn from India.’’
The Chinese ambassador said he was sending reports about every conceivable aspect of Indian life back home to Beijing, precisely because there was so much to learn from this country.
In a lighter vein, Ambassador Sun pointed out that India and the US were always talking about the fact that they are the largest and oldest democracies in the world, but China was hardly lagging behind.
``Both of you, India and the US, say that you are democracies. We think we are also a democracy, only with a different style. Both in quantity and quality, China has a very good relationship with the US,’’ he said spiritedly.
``In fact, there are more American companies in China than Indian. We eat more Macdonalds hamburgers and wear more blue jeans,’’ the Chinese ambassador added.
ENDS
The deal is dead, long live the nuclear deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August , 2007
Three weeks after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh challenged the Left parties, in an interview with `The Telegraph’, to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government somewhat noisily climbed down today and put the deal into cold storage – at least for the time being.
Acutely aware that it was being forced by the Left parties to choose between keeping the government alive and going ahead with the deal, the government’s ace-trouble-shooter External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee chose to go with the former option.
But Mukherjee, sources said, still hoped that even if the UPA had lost the battle with the Left, it would go on to win the war.
The sources, somewhat crestfallen, nevertheless maintained that ``there was no way’’ the government would not go ahead with the 123 agreement, that abandoning the deal altogether would mean ``not only a terrible defeat for the UPA alliance, but a huge blow for India’s credibility abroad.’’
Clearly, though, today’s announcement of a political committee that will seek to allay the fears and concerns of the Left parties, doesn’t eliminate the danger to the life of the government, only defers it.
However, the creation of such a committee -- significantly, one with no deadline – also indicates that both the government and the Left have, albeit reluctantly, agreed to buy some more time so that third parties do not benefit from their squabble.
The BJP, for example, continued to demand for a joint parliamentary committee to go into the nuclear deal, pointing out that the setting up of a mechanism between the Congress and the Left on the nuclear deal was not a personal matter, but one that impacted the entire nation.
According to Left sources, Mukherjee had assured them that the government would not go ahead with operationalising the deal as long as the committee was alive.
However, government sources pointed out that the committee could not be permanently open-ended.
Aware that an IAEA Board of governors meeting is being held on November 22, the government may well use that date as an internal deadline to take a political call on the Left support to the UPA alliance.
With Gujarat elections out of the way by then, the Congress party could find it easier to weigh the nuclear deal in balance.
The Foreign minister today sought to assuage the Left parties by stating that ``operationalisation of the deal will take into account the committee’s findings.’’
The Foreign minister’s skilful choice of words may be worth bearing in mind. Nowhere in the statement is it said that the government is bound to accept the committee’s outcomes.
Meaning, Delhi will not ask for a meeting with the IAEA to discuss an India-specific safeguards agreement, something that constitutes the immediate next step in operationalising the 123 agreement.
But MEA sources insisted that even as the committee, mostly political in nature, looked into ``certain aspects’’ of the bilateral agreement, ``the implications of the Hyde Act’’ on the 123 agreement, as well as ``implications of the nuclear agreement on foreign policy and security cooperation,’’ key interlocutors of the government would continue to talk to key members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for support for the 123 agreement.
For example, when Mukherjee speaks for India at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 28, he will undoubtedly also talk about the nuclear deal in his conversations with key NSG member states.
The sources pointed out that if the political committee did not succeed in assuaging the Left, the government would have no option but to go ahead with the deal. They accepted that elections were inevitable in such a scenario.
Under the circumstances, it now seems that the government’s internal deadline, for the committee as well as for taking the first of the three-step operationalisation, is around December 2007-January 2008.
The sources pointed out that India would be in grave danger of losing the momentum for support it had generated for the deal, and that further delay could mean that naysayers like China, Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway and even Ireland, would be strengthened by the internal opposition.
Although, in principle, the US Congress would remain very much alive, at least till elections will be held in November 2008, in practice, the US election machinery would get underway by January 2008.
The sources pointed out that after that it would be increasingly difficult to get distracted US Congressmen to focus on the Indo-US deal.
Moreover, the 123 agreement, according to the requirements of the Hyde Act, needs to be considered by the US Congress for at least 75 ``working days,’’ (or two-and-a-half months).
That would mean that the 123 agreement, having already cleared the IAEA hurdle as well as in possession of a waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, would have to be submitted to the US Congress by the Bush administration in December-January.
ENDS
New Delhi, August , 2007
Three weeks after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh challenged the Left parties, in an interview with `The Telegraph’, to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government somewhat noisily climbed down today and put the deal into cold storage – at least for the time being.
Acutely aware that it was being forced by the Left parties to choose between keeping the government alive and going ahead with the deal, the government’s ace-trouble-shooter External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee chose to go with the former option.
But Mukherjee, sources said, still hoped that even if the UPA had lost the battle with the Left, it would go on to win the war.
The sources, somewhat crestfallen, nevertheless maintained that ``there was no way’’ the government would not go ahead with the 123 agreement, that abandoning the deal altogether would mean ``not only a terrible defeat for the UPA alliance, but a huge blow for India’s credibility abroad.’’
Clearly, though, today’s announcement of a political committee that will seek to allay the fears and concerns of the Left parties, doesn’t eliminate the danger to the life of the government, only defers it.
However, the creation of such a committee -- significantly, one with no deadline – also indicates that both the government and the Left have, albeit reluctantly, agreed to buy some more time so that third parties do not benefit from their squabble.
The BJP, for example, continued to demand for a joint parliamentary committee to go into the nuclear deal, pointing out that the setting up of a mechanism between the Congress and the Left on the nuclear deal was not a personal matter, but one that impacted the entire nation.
According to Left sources, Mukherjee had assured them that the government would not go ahead with operationalising the deal as long as the committee was alive.
However, government sources pointed out that the committee could not be permanently open-ended.
Aware that an IAEA Board of governors meeting is being held on November 22, the government may well use that date as an internal deadline to take a political call on the Left support to the UPA alliance.
With Gujarat elections out of the way by then, the Congress party could find it easier to weigh the nuclear deal in balance.
The Foreign minister today sought to assuage the Left parties by stating that ``operationalisation of the deal will take into account the committee’s findings.’’
The Foreign minister’s skilful choice of words may be worth bearing in mind. Nowhere in the statement is it said that the government is bound to accept the committee’s outcomes.
Meaning, Delhi will not ask for a meeting with the IAEA to discuss an India-specific safeguards agreement, something that constitutes the immediate next step in operationalising the 123 agreement.
But MEA sources insisted that even as the committee, mostly political in nature, looked into ``certain aspects’’ of the bilateral agreement, ``the implications of the Hyde Act’’ on the 123 agreement, as well as ``implications of the nuclear agreement on foreign policy and security cooperation,’’ key interlocutors of the government would continue to talk to key members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for support for the 123 agreement.
For example, when Mukherjee speaks for India at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 28, he will undoubtedly also talk about the nuclear deal in his conversations with key NSG member states.
The sources pointed out that if the political committee did not succeed in assuaging the Left, the government would have no option but to go ahead with the deal. They accepted that elections were inevitable in such a scenario.
Under the circumstances, it now seems that the government’s internal deadline, for the committee as well as for taking the first of the three-step operationalisation, is around December 2007-January 2008.
The sources pointed out that India would be in grave danger of losing the momentum for support it had generated for the deal, and that further delay could mean that naysayers like China, Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway and even Ireland, would be strengthened by the internal opposition.
Although, in principle, the US Congress would remain very much alive, at least till elections will be held in November 2008, in practice, the US election machinery would get underway by January 2008.
The sources pointed out that after that it would be increasingly difficult to get distracted US Congressmen to focus on the Indo-US deal.
Moreover, the 123 agreement, according to the requirements of the Hyde Act, needs to be considered by the US Congress for at least 75 ``working days,’’ (or two-and-a-half months).
That would mean that the 123 agreement, having already cleared the IAEA hurdle as well as in possession of a waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, would have to be submitted to the US Congress by the Bush administration in December-January.
ENDS
Pranab Mukherjee is man for all seasons
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 29, 2007 : Come hell or high water, the Congress high command knows it can always depend on one man to come to the aid of the party.
So when the high command shot down External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee’s name for President a couple of months ago because he was much too ``indispensable’’ to be allowed to semi-retire, no one realised just how true that would turn out to be.
In the wake of the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal currently gripping the government, Mukherjee has become the one man everyone is turning to.
Seconded by both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to find a way out of the crisis with the Left parties, Mukherjee has patiently met every top leader from the CPM and the CPI, the RSP and the Forward Bloc, over the last three days.
And when a committee is set up to probe the whys and wherefores of the 123 agreement and the Hyde Act, Mukherjee will be its likely head.
By night, the Congress party’s political managers, Ahmed Patel and Defence minister AK Antony, land up at 13, Talkatora Road, the small white nondescript bungalow in which Mukherjee has lived for years and years. (He is entitled to a much fancier house of course, according to his stature, but he refuses to leave this place.)
Mukherjee’s aides say Patel and Anthony are around almost till the clock strikes midnight. Both know they cannot find a solution to the crisis without Mukherjee’s views on the matter.
``There are no holidays for us. We work on Onam and we work on Raksha Bandhan. We work during the day when Parliament is in session, in the Ministry of External Affairs and outside. Naturally we work on weekends,’’ Mukherjee’s aides said.
In fact, Mukherjee summoned the entire West Bengal Pradesh Congress committee for a meeting at his house a few days ago, a move being interpreted by some political observers as meaning that snap polls will be held sooner than later.
``Everything was discussed in the meeting, including the Indo-US nuclear deal and the Left’s failure to achieve industrialization in Bengal,’’ said sources.
Analysts love to point out that the Congress party’s near-total dependence on `Dada,’as Mukherjee is affectionately called, stems from the fact that he has been in the Congress party longer than any Congressman alive, first appointed minister of state for commerce in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet in the late 60s itself.
``Add to that the fact that he is completely discreet in the old-school mould and you get an unbeatable combination,’’ one politician said.
Mukherjee’s fame as trouble-shooter has in fact spread so far and wide that students from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, upset that Health minister Ambumani Ramadoss has refused to sign their medical degrees for the last couple of years, have taken an appointment to meet him at 10 pm at home tonight.
Only a couple of hours before, Mukherjee met Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes chairman Buta Singh, in connection with the protest by some AIIMS doctors over the selection of senior residents at India’s topmost research institution.
MEA sources pointed out that just because Pranab Mukherjee has become the UPA’s man-for-all-seasons doesn’t mean he slows down on ministry work.
Oman’s ambassador to India was calling on him this evening in connection with the possible visit by his King to India. As soon as the monsoon session of Parliament gets over on September 14, Mukherjee’s booked to travel to South Korea on September 16-17.
Ten days later he will be in New York to attend the UN General Assembly session, and take the rostrum to speak on September 28. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided not to go to the UNGA again this year.
As if all this were not enough, there is the matter of the 52 Groups of Ministers (GoMs) to consider. Last night, the GoM on gas pricing wrapped up its work and Petroleum minister Murli Deora is soon expected to announce its results.
Before that the GoM on the merger of Air-India with Indian Airlines had finalized its work, to create the newest corporate entity, Air India, to hit the skies.
Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel is already taking credit for that one.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 29, 2007 : Come hell or high water, the Congress high command knows it can always depend on one man to come to the aid of the party.
So when the high command shot down External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee’s name for President a couple of months ago because he was much too ``indispensable’’ to be allowed to semi-retire, no one realised just how true that would turn out to be.
In the wake of the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal currently gripping the government, Mukherjee has become the one man everyone is turning to.
Seconded by both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to find a way out of the crisis with the Left parties, Mukherjee has patiently met every top leader from the CPM and the CPI, the RSP and the Forward Bloc, over the last three days.
And when a committee is set up to probe the whys and wherefores of the 123 agreement and the Hyde Act, Mukherjee will be its likely head.
By night, the Congress party’s political managers, Ahmed Patel and Defence minister AK Antony, land up at 13, Talkatora Road, the small white nondescript bungalow in which Mukherjee has lived for years and years. (He is entitled to a much fancier house of course, according to his stature, but he refuses to leave this place.)
Mukherjee’s aides say Patel and Anthony are around almost till the clock strikes midnight. Both know they cannot find a solution to the crisis without Mukherjee’s views on the matter.
``There are no holidays for us. We work on Onam and we work on Raksha Bandhan. We work during the day when Parliament is in session, in the Ministry of External Affairs and outside. Naturally we work on weekends,’’ Mukherjee’s aides said.
In fact, Mukherjee summoned the entire West Bengal Pradesh Congress committee for a meeting at his house a few days ago, a move being interpreted by some political observers as meaning that snap polls will be held sooner than later.
``Everything was discussed in the meeting, including the Indo-US nuclear deal and the Left’s failure to achieve industrialization in Bengal,’’ said sources.
Analysts love to point out that the Congress party’s near-total dependence on `Dada,’as Mukherjee is affectionately called, stems from the fact that he has been in the Congress party longer than any Congressman alive, first appointed minister of state for commerce in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet in the late 60s itself.
``Add to that the fact that he is completely discreet in the old-school mould and you get an unbeatable combination,’’ one politician said.
Mukherjee’s fame as trouble-shooter has in fact spread so far and wide that students from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, upset that Health minister Ambumani Ramadoss has refused to sign their medical degrees for the last couple of years, have taken an appointment to meet him at 10 pm at home tonight.
Only a couple of hours before, Mukherjee met Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes chairman Buta Singh, in connection with the protest by some AIIMS doctors over the selection of senior residents at India’s topmost research institution.
MEA sources pointed out that just because Pranab Mukherjee has become the UPA’s man-for-all-seasons doesn’t mean he slows down on ministry work.
Oman’s ambassador to India was calling on him this evening in connection with the possible visit by his King to India. As soon as the monsoon session of Parliament gets over on September 14, Mukherjee’s booked to travel to South Korea on September 16-17.
Ten days later he will be in New York to attend the UN General Assembly session, and take the rostrum to speak on September 28. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided not to go to the UNGA again this year.
As if all this were not enough, there is the matter of the 52 Groups of Ministers (GoMs) to consider. Last night, the GoM on gas pricing wrapped up its work and Petroleum minister Murli Deora is soon expected to announce its results.
Before that the GoM on the merger of Air-India with Indian Airlines had finalized its work, to create the newest corporate entity, Air India, to hit the skies.
Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel is already taking credit for that one.
ENDS
PM won't go to Crawford, Sarkozy is chief guest at Republic Day
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 24, 2007 : In the hullabaloo over the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has quietly decided to call off his visit to US President George Bush’s Crawford ranch in Texas.
But in a clear sign that he is not backing down in the face of the Left challenge demanding Delhi not get into a strategic alliance with America, the PM has decided to widen the ambit of the current debate, by inviting other nuclear powers like France to intensify its engagement with India.
It is now confirmed that French president Nicholas Sarkozy will be the chief guest at India’s 58th Republic Day celebrations on January 26, 2008.
Sarkozy’s France is the world’s largest consumer of nuclear energy and French companies have been deliriously eyeing India’s nuclear energy market.
In fact, the 123 nuclear agreement between India and the US names France as one of three countries (the others are Russia and the UK) that will step into the vacuum to continue uninterrupted fuel supply for India, in case nuclear cooperation with the US ceases.
As for cancelling the Crawford ranch visit to meet Bush, the man the Left loves to hate, clearly, the PM did not want to exacerbate the political crisis with the parties that support his government in power.
Highly placed sources said the Crawford visit was to have taken place this weekend, that is August 24-26, since Bush spends most of August at home on the ranch. But what with the political crisis engulfing his government, the PM probably thought cancellation, at least for the time being, was a small price to pay.
Moreover, the monsoon session of Parliament was originally scheduled to also end today. But now that it ends on September 14, the PM could not possibly leave the country in the middle.
The government sources insisted the PM was ``in no mood to back down’’ in the face of the Left challenge that Delhi not take the next steps over the nuclear deal, that is not have an India-specific meeting at the IAEA.
The PM firmly believes that India’s growing international reputation is at stake if a deliberate decision is taken to go-slow on the nuclear deal.
In fact, MEA sources pointed out that preliminary talks with the IAEA on an India-specific safeguards agreement have been underway for many months now, and have been taking place alongside the 123 negotiations.
The sources said a go-slow at this stage would have a terrible impact on taking the nuclear deal to its logical conclusion. That naysayers like China, Ireland and Nordic states like Sweden and Norway, all members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, could point to the crippling domestic debate and ask if India could still be trusted.
Under the circumstances, a ``safe deadline’’ to go to the IAEA would have to be by the end of October, a month later for the Nuclear Suppliers Group and after that to the US Congress for a yes-no vote.
However, if the domestic crisis plays out longer than expected, sources said the deadline for the US Congress to pass its vote could be stretched to March-April 2008.
``If the US Congress doesn’t pass the deal by then, it is as good as dead,’’ the sources said.
After April, the US election will definitely get into full swing, and it may be difficult to get the attention of distracted US lawmakers.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 24, 2007 : In the hullabaloo over the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has quietly decided to call off his visit to US President George Bush’s Crawford ranch in Texas.
But in a clear sign that he is not backing down in the face of the Left challenge demanding Delhi not get into a strategic alliance with America, the PM has decided to widen the ambit of the current debate, by inviting other nuclear powers like France to intensify its engagement with India.
It is now confirmed that French president Nicholas Sarkozy will be the chief guest at India’s 58th Republic Day celebrations on January 26, 2008.
Sarkozy’s France is the world’s largest consumer of nuclear energy and French companies have been deliriously eyeing India’s nuclear energy market.
In fact, the 123 nuclear agreement between India and the US names France as one of three countries (the others are Russia and the UK) that will step into the vacuum to continue uninterrupted fuel supply for India, in case nuclear cooperation with the US ceases.
As for cancelling the Crawford ranch visit to meet Bush, the man the Left loves to hate, clearly, the PM did not want to exacerbate the political crisis with the parties that support his government in power.
Highly placed sources said the Crawford visit was to have taken place this weekend, that is August 24-26, since Bush spends most of August at home on the ranch. But what with the political crisis engulfing his government, the PM probably thought cancellation, at least for the time being, was a small price to pay.
Moreover, the monsoon session of Parliament was originally scheduled to also end today. But now that it ends on September 14, the PM could not possibly leave the country in the middle.
The government sources insisted the PM was ``in no mood to back down’’ in the face of the Left challenge that Delhi not take the next steps over the nuclear deal, that is not have an India-specific meeting at the IAEA.
The PM firmly believes that India’s growing international reputation is at stake if a deliberate decision is taken to go-slow on the nuclear deal.
In fact, MEA sources pointed out that preliminary talks with the IAEA on an India-specific safeguards agreement have been underway for many months now, and have been taking place alongside the 123 negotiations.
The sources said a go-slow at this stage would have a terrible impact on taking the nuclear deal to its logical conclusion. That naysayers like China, Ireland and Nordic states like Sweden and Norway, all members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, could point to the crippling domestic debate and ask if India could still be trusted.
Under the circumstances, a ``safe deadline’’ to go to the IAEA would have to be by the end of October, a month later for the Nuclear Suppliers Group and after that to the US Congress for a yes-no vote.
However, if the domestic crisis plays out longer than expected, sources said the deadline for the US Congress to pass its vote could be stretched to March-April 2008.
``If the US Congress doesn’t pass the deal by then, it is as good as dead,’’ the sources said.
After April, the US election will definitely get into full swing, and it may be difficult to get the attention of distracted US lawmakers.
ENDS
Nuclear spring round the corner, says PM
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 22, 2007 : For the first time in nearly two weeks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh smiled publicly and said he hoped the worst phase of the standoff with the Left parties could soon be over.
The PM, sitting next to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in Hyderabad House this evening, indicated more than once that the government was determined to go ahead with negotiating the next steps on the nuclear deal.
Such as a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, possibly in October, and subsequently an India-specific waiver with the 45-member Nuclear Supplies Group, perhaps in November. After both these steps, and according to the government’s original time-table, the deal would be put before the US Congress for a final yes-no vote.
Whether or not the Left parties were watching the PM speak at Hyderabad House is not known. Or whether both sides were actually working on a real compromise that would help blow over the storm currently destabilizing the government.
Clearly, the PM was, once again, sending his own message to the Left parties, considering the airwaves, over the last fortnight, have largely belonged to them.
Asked how he was so confident of going forward with the nuclear deal, considering the Left parties were determined to obstruct it, the PM said with a smile : ``That is a very naughty question, but I will try and answer it.’’
The PM added : ``There is some turbulence, but I am confident that we shall be able to overcome it.’’
That’s when Shelley’s `Ode to the West Wind’ came to the PM’s aid. ``When spring comes,’’ he said, ``can spring be far behind.’’
The PM went on to add that he hoped Japan would support India’s case at the NSG, indicating that Delhi was not backing down in the face of the Left demand that India stop contemplating negotiations with the IAEA and then the NSG.
Reiterating that India and the US had reached an agreement on civil nuclear issues, the PM said, several stages still remained for the deal to become operational. Such as a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and subsequently, a meeting with the NSG to grant an India-specific waiver.
``My sincere hope is that when the matter comes before the NSG, we will have the support of the Japanese government,’’ he said.
The Japanese prime minister played his part in the drama. Abe pointed out that nuclear weapons and nuclear explosions evoked enormous feeling in his country. However, he added, Tokyo realised that it was ``indispensable for India to have energy if it had to maintain growth rates, especially clean energy like nuclear energy.’’
Moreover, he pointed out, if India got approval from the IAEA, then that would certainly address the concerns of the international community as well as Japan.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 22, 2007 : For the first time in nearly two weeks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh smiled publicly and said he hoped the worst phase of the standoff with the Left parties could soon be over.
The PM, sitting next to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in Hyderabad House this evening, indicated more than once that the government was determined to go ahead with negotiating the next steps on the nuclear deal.
Such as a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, possibly in October, and subsequently an India-specific waiver with the 45-member Nuclear Supplies Group, perhaps in November. After both these steps, and according to the government’s original time-table, the deal would be put before the US Congress for a final yes-no vote.
Whether or not the Left parties were watching the PM speak at Hyderabad House is not known. Or whether both sides were actually working on a real compromise that would help blow over the storm currently destabilizing the government.
Clearly, the PM was, once again, sending his own message to the Left parties, considering the airwaves, over the last fortnight, have largely belonged to them.
Asked how he was so confident of going forward with the nuclear deal, considering the Left parties were determined to obstruct it, the PM said with a smile : ``That is a very naughty question, but I will try and answer it.’’
The PM added : ``There is some turbulence, but I am confident that we shall be able to overcome it.’’
That’s when Shelley’s `Ode to the West Wind’ came to the PM’s aid. ``When spring comes,’’ he said, ``can spring be far behind.’’
The PM went on to add that he hoped Japan would support India’s case at the NSG, indicating that Delhi was not backing down in the face of the Left demand that India stop contemplating negotiations with the IAEA and then the NSG.
Reiterating that India and the US had reached an agreement on civil nuclear issues, the PM said, several stages still remained for the deal to become operational. Such as a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and subsequently, a meeting with the NSG to grant an India-specific waiver.
``My sincere hope is that when the matter comes before the NSG, we will have the support of the Japanese government,’’ he said.
The Japanese prime minister played his part in the drama. Abe pointed out that nuclear weapons and nuclear explosions evoked enormous feeling in his country. However, he added, Tokyo realised that it was ``indispensable for India to have energy if it had to maintain growth rates, especially clean energy like nuclear energy.’’
Moreover, he pointed out, if India got approval from the IAEA, then that would certainly address the concerns of the international community as well as Japan.
ENDS
Picture-perfect parliament greets Shinzo Abe
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 22, 2007 : A picture-perfect parliament was on display today as Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe sketched the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship with India, but minutes later both houses were a study in contrast as angry lawmakers stalled proceedings with the demand that strict action be taken against India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen.
In a stirring speech in parliament, the Japanese PM paid tribute to Radhabinod Pal, the lone dissenting judge who refused to condemn the Japanese as war criminals during the Tokyo Trials after World War II.
Abe’s determination to meet Prashanto, Justice Pal’s 80-year-old son, in Calcutta tomorrow, comes in the wake of some criticism back home in Japan, with people accusing Abe of playing to the nationalist gallery.
But Abe, despite his minority PM status, has remained unfazed. Partly because his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was one of those accused by the Allied powers of being one such war criminal, and partly because Kishi and Radhabinod Pal were good friends.
As Hiroshige Seko, special adviser to Abe told The Telegraph, ``The Prime Minister is going to Calcutta because he likes the city and believes it to be especially friendly to Japan.’’
In the same spirit, he told parliamentarians today that the Japanese people had undergone a ``discovery of India’’ and begun to look upon India as a partner in freedom and prosperity.
This was only the second time in recent years that a foreign leader was being given the honour to address a joint session of Parliament. But unlike the time Bill Clinton had spoken in Central Hall in 2002, when parliamentarians had vied with each other to shake the erstwhile president’s hand, the 14th Lok Sabha was a picture of decorum.
The parliamentarians applauded at the right places, even gave Abe a standing ovation at the end of his speech. But that special excitement associated with the Clinton visit was simply missing.
As for Abe, he invoked the title of a book by Dara Shikoh in 1655 called the `Confluence of the Two Seas’, saying that the Pacific and Indian oceans which washed Japan and India were now engaging each other in a ``broader Asia.’’
Clearly, the reference was to a rising China next door, whose increasing defence expenditure a senior Japanese official described as being of ``considerable concern.’’
In fact there was no mention of China in Abe’s parliament speech. But it was littered with implicit comparisons in terms of freedom, democracy and human rights – as well as the need to protect shipping routes between the two countries for trade and commerce.
Abe also proposed a new initiative called ``Cool Earth 50,’’ which went beyond the Kyoto protocol by promising to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 per cent by 2050.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 22, 2007 : A picture-perfect parliament was on display today as Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe sketched the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship with India, but minutes later both houses were a study in contrast as angry lawmakers stalled proceedings with the demand that strict action be taken against India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen.
In a stirring speech in parliament, the Japanese PM paid tribute to Radhabinod Pal, the lone dissenting judge who refused to condemn the Japanese as war criminals during the Tokyo Trials after World War II.
Abe’s determination to meet Prashanto, Justice Pal’s 80-year-old son, in Calcutta tomorrow, comes in the wake of some criticism back home in Japan, with people accusing Abe of playing to the nationalist gallery.
But Abe, despite his minority PM status, has remained unfazed. Partly because his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was one of those accused by the Allied powers of being one such war criminal, and partly because Kishi and Radhabinod Pal were good friends.
As Hiroshige Seko, special adviser to Abe told The Telegraph, ``The Prime Minister is going to Calcutta because he likes the city and believes it to be especially friendly to Japan.’’
In the same spirit, he told parliamentarians today that the Japanese people had undergone a ``discovery of India’’ and begun to look upon India as a partner in freedom and prosperity.
This was only the second time in recent years that a foreign leader was being given the honour to address a joint session of Parliament. But unlike the time Bill Clinton had spoken in Central Hall in 2002, when parliamentarians had vied with each other to shake the erstwhile president’s hand, the 14th Lok Sabha was a picture of decorum.
The parliamentarians applauded at the right places, even gave Abe a standing ovation at the end of his speech. But that special excitement associated with the Clinton visit was simply missing.
As for Abe, he invoked the title of a book by Dara Shikoh in 1655 called the `Confluence of the Two Seas’, saying that the Pacific and Indian oceans which washed Japan and India were now engaging each other in a ``broader Asia.’’
Clearly, the reference was to a rising China next door, whose increasing defence expenditure a senior Japanese official described as being of ``considerable concern.’’
In fact there was no mention of China in Abe’s parliament speech. But it was littered with implicit comparisons in terms of freedom, democracy and human rights – as well as the need to protect shipping routes between the two countries for trade and commerce.
Abe also proposed a new initiative called ``Cool Earth 50,’’ which went beyond the Kyoto protocol by promising to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 per cent by 2050.
ENDS
China hand in Indo-US nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : The `China hand’ continues to reverberate in the current standoff between the Left parties and the Manmohan Singh government over the nuclear deal, with sections of the foreign policy establishment looking for dark connections between the Left’s opposition, Beijing and even Pakistan.
Even if the government survives till the end of the year, two major visits by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to China and to George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, are now more than likely to fall through the cracks.
For the moment at least, the government bravely insists ``it is not going to back down’’ in the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Left parties, but go ahead with talks at the IAEA as well as at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
Already, though, speculation is rife that China may introduce a formulation in the NSG that calls for ``criteria-based exemptions’’ for countries like India, who have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and are therefore seeking a waiver to carry out nuclear commerce.
Meaning, if China puts a spoke in the NSG wheel, which works on the consensus principle, the deal may be in trouble even before it reaches the US Congress for a yes-no vote by December or early next year.
Significantly, Pakistan’s spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told a press conference in Islamabad on Monday that the NSG should introduce such ``criteria-based exemptions’’. Aslam pointed out that the NSG must consider a partner in the global non-proliferation regime and that respond to its enormous energy needs.
But Beijing has denied reports that China was in the process of negotiating a civilian nuclear energy pact with Pakistan on the lines of the Indo-US deal, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying that ``there is no such deal in the making.’’
Analysts here say that the Left opposition to the nuclear deal should also take into account Beijing’s systematic help to Pakistan with its nuclear and missile programme.
They point out that the Left may well be pursuing its anti-imperialist stance, but the reality was that such domestic opposition would only help Beijing scupper the Indo-US deal.
The official `People’s Daily’ last week spoke of ``double standards’’ and how the Indo-US deal would ``damage the existing non-proliferation system.’’
Strategic analyst B. Raman, pointing to the exception made for importing about a thousand workers from China to work on a Reliance pipeline in Andhra Pradesh, says the ministry of home affairs was initially not in favour of allowing the Chinese labour force in.
But, Raman said, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury insisted the Chinese labour force be allowed in.
Noted strategic expert K. Subrahmanyam believes that there is not sufficient understanding of the balance of power world, but too much dependence on Cold War thinking. ``We have to learn to deal with all powers,’’ he said, adding, ``the 123 agreement will allow us to work with all 45 nations who are part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, not only the US.’’
ENDS
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : The `China hand’ continues to reverberate in the current standoff between the Left parties and the Manmohan Singh government over the nuclear deal, with sections of the foreign policy establishment looking for dark connections between the Left’s opposition, Beijing and even Pakistan.
Even if the government survives till the end of the year, two major visits by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to China and to George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, are now more than likely to fall through the cracks.
For the moment at least, the government bravely insists ``it is not going to back down’’ in the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Left parties, but go ahead with talks at the IAEA as well as at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
Already, though, speculation is rife that China may introduce a formulation in the NSG that calls for ``criteria-based exemptions’’ for countries like India, who have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and are therefore seeking a waiver to carry out nuclear commerce.
Meaning, if China puts a spoke in the NSG wheel, which works on the consensus principle, the deal may be in trouble even before it reaches the US Congress for a yes-no vote by December or early next year.
Significantly, Pakistan’s spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told a press conference in Islamabad on Monday that the NSG should introduce such ``criteria-based exemptions’’. Aslam pointed out that the NSG must consider a partner in the global non-proliferation regime and that respond to its enormous energy needs.
But Beijing has denied reports that China was in the process of negotiating a civilian nuclear energy pact with Pakistan on the lines of the Indo-US deal, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying that ``there is no such deal in the making.’’
Analysts here say that the Left opposition to the nuclear deal should also take into account Beijing’s systematic help to Pakistan with its nuclear and missile programme.
They point out that the Left may well be pursuing its anti-imperialist stance, but the reality was that such domestic opposition would only help Beijing scupper the Indo-US deal.
The official `People’s Daily’ last week spoke of ``double standards’’ and how the Indo-US deal would ``damage the existing non-proliferation system.’’
Strategic analyst B. Raman, pointing to the exception made for importing about a thousand workers from China to work on a Reliance pipeline in Andhra Pradesh, says the ministry of home affairs was initially not in favour of allowing the Chinese labour force in.
But, Raman said, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury insisted the Chinese labour force be allowed in.
Noted strategic expert K. Subrahmanyam believes that there is not sufficient understanding of the balance of power world, but too much dependence on Cold War thinking. ``We have to learn to deal with all powers,’’ he said, adding, ``the 123 agreement will allow us to work with all 45 nations who are part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, not only the US.’’
ENDS
Ronen Sen in soup over `headless chicken' remark
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : The newly combined Left-Right opposition in parliament continued to sink their teeth into India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen over his reported remarks on the nuclear deal, aware that it was acutely embarrassing the government by doing so.
Sen’s remarks in an interview with rediff.com that spoke of journalists ``running around like headless chickens looking for a comment here or comment there’’, in their reporting on the Indo-US nuclear deal, was mistaken by parliamentarians as a reference to themselves.
Even the unusually abject tone of Sen’s apology did not mollify the parliamentarians. Just like the interview, the mea culpa sought an honourable exit. But it was not to be.
``My comment about ``running around like headless chicken looking for a comment here or comment there’’ was a tactless observation on some of my media friends, and most certainly not with reference to any Hon’ble member of parliament. It was certainly not my intention to cast aspersion on any individual or organization.
``However, if I have unwittingly hurt any sentiments, I offer my unqualified apologies,’’ Sen said in a statement that was read out by Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha.
One of India’s ablest diplomats, Sen has handled some of the most sensitive, national assignments in his nearly 40-year-long career. He has been ambassador in Russia, Germany and London. He has served in the atomic energy department. As joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO, he was amongst the young prime minister’s closest aides.
Ironically, it was Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government which, in April 2004, appointed him ambassador to the US. Today, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj demanded that Sen be summoned to the parliamentary bar and made to apologise.
When the NDA lost power to the UPA in the elections that followed a month later in May 2004, Sen’s political appointment was approved by the new government.
Usually taciturn about his work and always reluctant to speak about the many roles he has played behind the scenes, Sen’s Sunday morning conversation with Aziz Haniffa, the rediff.com reporter in question, has opened him to a variety of unparliamentary charges today.
Clearly, he has been a major mover behind the nuclear deal, travelling to Delhi every other month to talk to both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, on how to pull off India’s most daring gamble in the face of the toughest American opposition.
Sen insisted in his apology that he had an off-the-record conversation with Haniffa, giving him his assessment on the nuclear deal. He said a number of his comments were ``either misunderstood or misquoted or quoted out of context.’’ For example, Sen said, he never said that the Hyde Act could not be renegotiated, but was only referring to the bilateral 123 agreement.
Haniffa, on the rediff.com website, said he stood by his story.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : The newly combined Left-Right opposition in parliament continued to sink their teeth into India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen over his reported remarks on the nuclear deal, aware that it was acutely embarrassing the government by doing so.
Sen’s remarks in an interview with rediff.com that spoke of journalists ``running around like headless chickens looking for a comment here or comment there’’, in their reporting on the Indo-US nuclear deal, was mistaken by parliamentarians as a reference to themselves.
Even the unusually abject tone of Sen’s apology did not mollify the parliamentarians. Just like the interview, the mea culpa sought an honourable exit. But it was not to be.
``My comment about ``running around like headless chicken looking for a comment here or comment there’’ was a tactless observation on some of my media friends, and most certainly not with reference to any Hon’ble member of parliament. It was certainly not my intention to cast aspersion on any individual or organization.
``However, if I have unwittingly hurt any sentiments, I offer my unqualified apologies,’’ Sen said in a statement that was read out by Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha.
One of India’s ablest diplomats, Sen has handled some of the most sensitive, national assignments in his nearly 40-year-long career. He has been ambassador in Russia, Germany and London. He has served in the atomic energy department. As joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO, he was amongst the young prime minister’s closest aides.
Ironically, it was Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government which, in April 2004, appointed him ambassador to the US. Today, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj demanded that Sen be summoned to the parliamentary bar and made to apologise.
When the NDA lost power to the UPA in the elections that followed a month later in May 2004, Sen’s political appointment was approved by the new government.
Usually taciturn about his work and always reluctant to speak about the many roles he has played behind the scenes, Sen’s Sunday morning conversation with Aziz Haniffa, the rediff.com reporter in question, has opened him to a variety of unparliamentary charges today.
Clearly, he has been a major mover behind the nuclear deal, travelling to Delhi every other month to talk to both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, on how to pull off India’s most daring gamble in the face of the toughest American opposition.
Sen insisted in his apology that he had an off-the-record conversation with Haniffa, giving him his assessment on the nuclear deal. He said a number of his comments were ``either misunderstood or misquoted or quoted out of context.’’ For example, Sen said, he never said that the Hyde Act could not be renegotiated, but was only referring to the bilateral 123 agreement.
Haniffa, on the rediff.com website, said he stood by his story.
ENDS
Minority PM meets beleaguered PM
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : A beleaguered prime minister Manmohan Singh will cede the floor to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in a joint session of parliament tomorrow – and dearly hope the MPs will at least listen to him.
Fact is, Abe is almost as politically weak back home in Japan these days. About three weeks ago, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in Japan’s upper house of parliament over a pension scandal that has been raging in that country.
As a consequence, even the Japanese minority PM’s trip to India was in doubt.
But the redoubtable Abe clearly decided to grin and bear it. At stake was the offer of a ``strategic partnership’’ with India, with lots of money thrown in for a Mumbai-Delhi freight corridor, possible investment promises for the Calcutta metro and other projects nationwide.
The cherry on the cake? A path-breaking nuclear deal India had just pulled off with the US, a treaty ally of the Japanese. US president George Bush was to have been the invisible third man in all the photo-ops between Singh and Abe.
What a difference three weeks can make.
Manmohan Singh and Shinzo Abe will still smile and shake hands before the cameras, but it’s clearly not going to be the same thing. Most projects may even be publicly announced. In tomorrow’s photo-op, George Bush will still be the invisible third person, only this time neither leader is likely to publicly declare his friendship with America.
None other than a senior Japanese government official today conceded that this was a particularly trying period in the political lives of both leaders. The official would not come on record fearing possible diplomatic impropriety, that too in a foreign country.
``It is a fact that both leaders, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Abe face difficult political situations,’’ the senior Japanese official said.
However, he added, ``whatever political developments will emerge in Japan and India, we are confident that the agreements from the summit will be passed on to future governments.’’
That, of course, was a direct reference to the Indo-US nuclear deal being bitterly contested in parliament these days. Both Indian and Japanese diplomats as well as politicians concede that it is unheard-of for politicians like Yashwant Sinha of the BJP saying that if they came to power they would abrogate the deal signed by the UPA government.
Still, officials from both sides insist that in the talks between the two PMs tomorrow, however politically shaky their governments may be, India will ask for Japan’s support for the Indo-US pact at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting.
It is more than likely that Japan will give it.
The senior Japanese official pointed out that the nuclear issue remained a very sensitive subject back home, but Tokyo also understood India’s need for clean and assured supplies of energy for its galloping domestic needs and that nuclear energy was one answer.
Abe leaves for Calcutta on August 23 when he also meets the family of Radha Binod Pal, the only judge who gave a dissenting judgement at the Tokyo Tribunals after World War II, proclaiming the Japanese ``not guilty.’’
ENDS
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : A beleaguered prime minister Manmohan Singh will cede the floor to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in a joint session of parliament tomorrow – and dearly hope the MPs will at least listen to him.
Fact is, Abe is almost as politically weak back home in Japan these days. About three weeks ago, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in Japan’s upper house of parliament over a pension scandal that has been raging in that country.
As a consequence, even the Japanese minority PM’s trip to India was in doubt.
But the redoubtable Abe clearly decided to grin and bear it. At stake was the offer of a ``strategic partnership’’ with India, with lots of money thrown in for a Mumbai-Delhi freight corridor, possible investment promises for the Calcutta metro and other projects nationwide.
The cherry on the cake? A path-breaking nuclear deal India had just pulled off with the US, a treaty ally of the Japanese. US president George Bush was to have been the invisible third man in all the photo-ops between Singh and Abe.
What a difference three weeks can make.
Manmohan Singh and Shinzo Abe will still smile and shake hands before the cameras, but it’s clearly not going to be the same thing. Most projects may even be publicly announced. In tomorrow’s photo-op, George Bush will still be the invisible third person, only this time neither leader is likely to publicly declare his friendship with America.
None other than a senior Japanese government official today conceded that this was a particularly trying period in the political lives of both leaders. The official would not come on record fearing possible diplomatic impropriety, that too in a foreign country.
``It is a fact that both leaders, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Abe face difficult political situations,’’ the senior Japanese official said.
However, he added, ``whatever political developments will emerge in Japan and India, we are confident that the agreements from the summit will be passed on to future governments.’’
That, of course, was a direct reference to the Indo-US nuclear deal being bitterly contested in parliament these days. Both Indian and Japanese diplomats as well as politicians concede that it is unheard-of for politicians like Yashwant Sinha of the BJP saying that if they came to power they would abrogate the deal signed by the UPA government.
Still, officials from both sides insist that in the talks between the two PMs tomorrow, however politically shaky their governments may be, India will ask for Japan’s support for the Indo-US pact at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting.
It is more than likely that Japan will give it.
The senior Japanese official pointed out that the nuclear issue remained a very sensitive subject back home, but Tokyo also understood India’s need for clean and assured supplies of energy for its galloping domestic needs and that nuclear energy was one answer.
Abe leaves for Calcutta on August 23 when he also meets the family of Radha Binod Pal, the only judge who gave a dissenting judgement at the Tokyo Tribunals after World War II, proclaiming the Japanese ``not guilty.’’
ENDS
Sonia sends support signal to PM
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 20, 2007 : Congress president Sonia Gandhi left for South Africa tonight, ostensibly sending a strong signal of support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s handling of the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Equally, however, the visit of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to India for the next three days – the exact time that Mrs Gandhi is expected to be in South Africa – means that she is using the opportunity go, because the current political crisis engulfing the country is hardly likely to snowball during the visit of a foreign leader.
Abe arrives in Delhi tomorrow, and will address a joint session of Parliament on Wednesday, besides holding talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a wide variety of strategic issues, including Japan’s support for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Meanwhile, Sonia is believed to have wanted to keep to her very full South Africa schedule, especially since it looks good that her political managers are currently in the throes trying to work out a political compromise with the Left parties.
Till she returns, then, the government will seek to maintain a business-as-usual façade on all sides, in order not to give the impression that it is completely at the mercy of the Left parties.
As for Sonia, who has displayed a keen sense of keeping alive the Nehru-Gandhi tradition of camaraderie, especially with nations imbued with the revolutionary spirit, the journey to South Africa is perfect.
So in Cape Town and in Johannesburg, she will launch the Mahatma Gandhi lecture series, address the South African parliament, meet the top leadership of the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela and visit Robben Island – where Mandela spent 26 years in incarceration during the apartheid years.
Sonia may have also realised that, whatever the crisis at home, she could not have cancelled her South African engagements without some loss of face abroad.
Minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma, who has coordinated Mrs Gandhi’s programme, has already left for South Africa.
The government’s business-as-usual strategy, currently on full display until the crisis is resolved one way or another, came into force with Sonia’s South Africa visit.
Asked if, under the circumstances, Mrs Gandhi would still go, Sharma said, ``Why should she cancel?’’
None other than Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon was today putting on a brave face at a press conference dealing with Abe’s visit.
Menon refused to divulge any details as to how Delhi was dealing with the crisis, only pointing out that India would definitely seek Japan’s cooperation when the Indo-US nuclear deal comes up at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
``Yes, we will,’’ he said.
In fact, atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar is setting off for Vienna in September for a meeting with the IAEA, although it isn’t clear yet whether the Indo-US nuclear deal is also on the agenda.
Still, a strong, underlying strand in the Manmohan Singh-Abe conversations could revolve around the ``China factor,’’ which seems to be emerging as a significant theme in the current political-diplomatic crisis.
China, in fact, is already trying to introduce at the NSG an amendment which says that all ``exceptions’’ to be brought before the NSG for waiver, such as India, should be based on certain criteria.
Some analysts interpret this move in the direction of China pushing for similar rights for Pakistan sometime in the future.
PTI reports from Beijing say that China and Pakistan are now making progress on a similar nuclear deal as between India and the US.
Pakistan's defence ties with China, and the implications of the Indo-US deal on the two countries were discussed in detail earlier this months when General Ehsan-ul-Haq, chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee, led a top-level military delegation to Beijing. During talks, Chinese Vice-President Zeng Qinghong and Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan assured the delegation of increased support to ensure its security.
China's Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai also visited Islamabad this month, calling on President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri among others. At these meetings, the draft of a possible Sino-Pakistan deal was discussed, sources said.
Meanwhile, a report from Islamabad said that Pakistan has decided to accelerate its nuclear programme in view of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, with President Musharraf issuing directives to scientists in this regard. It was reported that the work on the Khushab reactor would be accelerated, while new reactors would also be installed.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 20, 2007 : Congress president Sonia Gandhi left for South Africa tonight, ostensibly sending a strong signal of support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s handling of the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Equally, however, the visit of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to India for the next three days – the exact time that Mrs Gandhi is expected to be in South Africa – means that she is using the opportunity go, because the current political crisis engulfing the country is hardly likely to snowball during the visit of a foreign leader.
Abe arrives in Delhi tomorrow, and will address a joint session of Parliament on Wednesday, besides holding talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a wide variety of strategic issues, including Japan’s support for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Meanwhile, Sonia is believed to have wanted to keep to her very full South Africa schedule, especially since it looks good that her political managers are currently in the throes trying to work out a political compromise with the Left parties.
Till she returns, then, the government will seek to maintain a business-as-usual façade on all sides, in order not to give the impression that it is completely at the mercy of the Left parties.
As for Sonia, who has displayed a keen sense of keeping alive the Nehru-Gandhi tradition of camaraderie, especially with nations imbued with the revolutionary spirit, the journey to South Africa is perfect.
So in Cape Town and in Johannesburg, she will launch the Mahatma Gandhi lecture series, address the South African parliament, meet the top leadership of the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela and visit Robben Island – where Mandela spent 26 years in incarceration during the apartheid years.
Sonia may have also realised that, whatever the crisis at home, she could not have cancelled her South African engagements without some loss of face abroad.
Minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma, who has coordinated Mrs Gandhi’s programme, has already left for South Africa.
The government’s business-as-usual strategy, currently on full display until the crisis is resolved one way or another, came into force with Sonia’s South Africa visit.
Asked if, under the circumstances, Mrs Gandhi would still go, Sharma said, ``Why should she cancel?’’
None other than Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon was today putting on a brave face at a press conference dealing with Abe’s visit.
Menon refused to divulge any details as to how Delhi was dealing with the crisis, only pointing out that India would definitely seek Japan’s cooperation when the Indo-US nuclear deal comes up at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
``Yes, we will,’’ he said.
In fact, atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar is setting off for Vienna in September for a meeting with the IAEA, although it isn’t clear yet whether the Indo-US nuclear deal is also on the agenda.
Still, a strong, underlying strand in the Manmohan Singh-Abe conversations could revolve around the ``China factor,’’ which seems to be emerging as a significant theme in the current political-diplomatic crisis.
China, in fact, is already trying to introduce at the NSG an amendment which says that all ``exceptions’’ to be brought before the NSG for waiver, such as India, should be based on certain criteria.
Some analysts interpret this move in the direction of China pushing for similar rights for Pakistan sometime in the future.
PTI reports from Beijing say that China and Pakistan are now making progress on a similar nuclear deal as between India and the US.
Pakistan's defence ties with China, and the implications of the Indo-US deal on the two countries were discussed in detail earlier this months when General Ehsan-ul-Haq, chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee, led a top-level military delegation to Beijing. During talks, Chinese Vice-President Zeng Qinghong and Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan assured the delegation of increased support to ensure its security.
China's Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai also visited Islamabad this month, calling on President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri among others. At these meetings, the draft of a possible Sino-Pakistan deal was discussed, sources said.
Meanwhile, a report from Islamabad said that Pakistan has decided to accelerate its nuclear programme in view of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, with President Musharraf issuing directives to scientists in this regard. It was reported that the work on the Khushab reactor would be accelerated, while new reactors would also be installed.
ENDS
India can test, says Pranab
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 16, 2007 : In an effort to contain the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal rapidly threatening the Left-UPA alliance, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee was pushed to clarify before the Lok Sabha today that India retained the ``sovereign right to rest and would do so if it is necessary in the national interest.’’
Mukherjee’s unusual statement came in the wake of a comment by the US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack widely quoted in today’s newspapers, which pointed out that in the event of a nuclear test by India, ``all nuclear cooperation gets terminated.’’
McCormack’s statement was perfect fuel for the fire currently engulfing the UPA government and it led to the unusual act of the Foreign Minister making a statement to Parliament, defending India’s rights. For a ministry which hardly ever deigns to react to press reports, the MEA was said to be hard put to find the statement on the US State Department website.
Nevertheless, the damage had been done by McCormack and Mukherjee was constrained to tell Parliament that India had an entirely different view on the matter :
``The only restraint is our voluntary unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, declared by the previous government and being continued by the successor government. There is nothing in the bilateral agreement that would tie the hands of a future government or legally constrain its options. A decision to undertake a future nuclear test would India’s sovereign decision…’’Mukherjee said.
The government is furious at the way the BJP is especially getting its teeth into the UPA jugular, considering it was the one to impose a voluntary moratorium after the 1998 tests.
However, the fact that Mukherjee was persuaded to make the statement today was clearly a manifestation of the pressure the UPA is currently under.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 16, 2007 : In an effort to contain the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal rapidly threatening the Left-UPA alliance, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee was pushed to clarify before the Lok Sabha today that India retained the ``sovereign right to rest and would do so if it is necessary in the national interest.’’
Mukherjee’s unusual statement came in the wake of a comment by the US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack widely quoted in today’s newspapers, which pointed out that in the event of a nuclear test by India, ``all nuclear cooperation gets terminated.’’
McCormack’s statement was perfect fuel for the fire currently engulfing the UPA government and it led to the unusual act of the Foreign Minister making a statement to Parliament, defending India’s rights. For a ministry which hardly ever deigns to react to press reports, the MEA was said to be hard put to find the statement on the US State Department website.
Nevertheless, the damage had been done by McCormack and Mukherjee was constrained to tell Parliament that India had an entirely different view on the matter :
``The only restraint is our voluntary unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, declared by the previous government and being continued by the successor government. There is nothing in the bilateral agreement that would tie the hands of a future government or legally constrain its options. A decision to undertake a future nuclear test would India’s sovereign decision…’’Mukherjee said.
The government is furious at the way the BJP is especially getting its teeth into the UPA jugular, considering it was the one to impose a voluntary moratorium after the 1998 tests.
However, the fact that Mukherjee was persuaded to make the statement today was clearly a manifestation of the pressure the UPA is currently under.
ENDS
No middle path on nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 17 , 2007: It’s the season of ironies, both in India and the US, as both nations on either side of the Atlantic await with bated breath the outcome of the Left parties’ meetings on the kind of relationship India should adopt with the ``imperialist’’ US.
One thing is, however, certain. The Indo-US nuclear deal has already acquired such a momentum of its own, that if the government acquiesces to Left pressure to stop ``operationalising’’ the deal, it may end up virtually killing it.
That is because US President George Bush’s rapidly waning popularity means that his administration will practically become lame-duck after the US Congress returns from its December recess.
Under the circumstances, the US Congress must pass the deal in a ``yes-no’’ (up-down) vote by early-mid December. Analysts say that this is the last of three steps that will make the deal fully operational.
The other two steps are related to talks between Delhi (the department of atomic energy and the MEA) and the IAEA on negotiating an India-specific safeguards agreement. Simultaneously, Delhi’s envoys have already begun talking to 45 countries who are members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an Indian waiver.
PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran has been on the road for the past week, visiting Russia and Germany, after which he goes to Brazil and Argentina.
If the Left refuses to soften its stand on ``operationalising’’ the deal, and if the government ends up accepting the Left’s demands for the sake of saving itself, the easiest way out would be to opt for a go-slow approach.
The danger of that, however, is that if the US Congress doesn’t pass the deal by early-mid December, it is as good as dead. There can be no middle path on this one.
Significantly, even as the Left debates the crisis within itself, it may be surprised to find its views are near identical to several non-proliferation hawks within the US establishment, which believes the Bush administration has virtually destroyed the architecture of non-proliferation by making an exception for India.
Top non-proliferation hawk Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre in Washington DC said : ``At the very least, the Bush administration should not make it easier for New Delhi to resume nuclear testing and to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. It appears that the 123 Agreement fails to meet these minimal standards as well as the clear requirements established in the Hyde Act.”
Nuclear expert Robert Einhorn added : “Mr Bush, eager to place relations with India on a new footing, waived many of the restrictions in order to sign the initial deal... Now we’ve gone beyond that, and given India something that we don’t give to Russia and China.’’
Back home, former ambassador to Bangladesh Deb Mukherjee said the perception that India was not averse to becoming a junior partner of the US was growing. By inviting the USS Nimitz to anchor in Indian waters and by voting against Iran at the IAEA, he said such a perception was also growing in the region.
He said he had been asked by people in Bangladesh whether India was becoming the US ``chowkidar’’ in the region.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 17 , 2007: It’s the season of ironies, both in India and the US, as both nations on either side of the Atlantic await with bated breath the outcome of the Left parties’ meetings on the kind of relationship India should adopt with the ``imperialist’’ US.
One thing is, however, certain. The Indo-US nuclear deal has already acquired such a momentum of its own, that if the government acquiesces to Left pressure to stop ``operationalising’’ the deal, it may end up virtually killing it.
That is because US President George Bush’s rapidly waning popularity means that his administration will practically become lame-duck after the US Congress returns from its December recess.
Under the circumstances, the US Congress must pass the deal in a ``yes-no’’ (up-down) vote by early-mid December. Analysts say that this is the last of three steps that will make the deal fully operational.
The other two steps are related to talks between Delhi (the department of atomic energy and the MEA) and the IAEA on negotiating an India-specific safeguards agreement. Simultaneously, Delhi’s envoys have already begun talking to 45 countries who are members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an Indian waiver.
PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran has been on the road for the past week, visiting Russia and Germany, after which he goes to Brazil and Argentina.
If the Left refuses to soften its stand on ``operationalising’’ the deal, and if the government ends up accepting the Left’s demands for the sake of saving itself, the easiest way out would be to opt for a go-slow approach.
The danger of that, however, is that if the US Congress doesn’t pass the deal by early-mid December, it is as good as dead. There can be no middle path on this one.
Significantly, even as the Left debates the crisis within itself, it may be surprised to find its views are near identical to several non-proliferation hawks within the US establishment, which believes the Bush administration has virtually destroyed the architecture of non-proliferation by making an exception for India.
Top non-proliferation hawk Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre in Washington DC said : ``At the very least, the Bush administration should not make it easier for New Delhi to resume nuclear testing and to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. It appears that the 123 Agreement fails to meet these minimal standards as well as the clear requirements established in the Hyde Act.”
Nuclear expert Robert Einhorn added : “Mr Bush, eager to place relations with India on a new footing, waived many of the restrictions in order to sign the initial deal... Now we’ve gone beyond that, and given India something that we don’t give to Russia and China.’’
Back home, former ambassador to Bangladesh Deb Mukherjee said the perception that India was not averse to becoming a junior partner of the US was growing. By inviting the USS Nimitz to anchor in Indian waters and by voting against Iran at the IAEA, he said such a perception was also growing in the region.
He said he had been asked by people in Bangladesh whether India was becoming the US ``chowkidar’’ in the region.
ENDS
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
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
MKN takes Kakodkar by the hand
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 11, 2007 : When National Security Adviser M K Narayanan sits down to negotiate with his US counterpart Steve Hadley next week on July 16-17, the composition of his delegation is a sure signal that the nuclear deal currently being negotiated between the two sides is in its final stages.
Apart from Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon and India’s ambassador to Singapore S. Jaishanker, the presence of Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar on the high-powered Indian side indicates not only that the Department of Atomic Energy has come on board, but that the entire Indian establishment is speaking with one voice.
In fact, an unusual telephone conversation between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US president George Bush this evening, confirming that Narayanan & Co will be visiting the US for talks with Hadley, also signals the American willingness to give a political thrust to the deal at the highest level.
The visit of India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen to India, for consultations with the PM last week, further establishes the point that the endgame is near.
Highly placed sources said everything now depends on the US side to give India the right to reprocess spent fuel. Delhi has already said that the reprocessed fuel will not be used in its military programme.
It is not clear whether Bush indicated as much to Manmohan Singh during the telephone call, which is that the US is willing to give India the right to reprocess.
However, if Narayanan is able to pull this off with the Americans next week, then the deal is as good as done.
A signature ceremony would then become a formality, possibly between the two foreign ministers. The PM, in a meeting with women journalists last week had said that he will be traveling to the US for the UN General Assembly when he would meet Bush.
The sources pointed out that it was Narayanan’s offer to Hadley last month, on Delhi’s willingness to constitute a separate storage facility for the spent fuel that would be subject to additional safeguards and inspections, that seems to have broken the deadlock.
Naturally, that offer had the consent of Kakodkar and therefore, the entire atomic energy establishment. It also indicated that this was the limit to which Delhi was prepared to go.
This offer of a safeguarded storage facility, the sources felt, should also take care of the concerns that the US had over the reprocessed fuel being possibly used for India’s military programme.
Considering the bitter past history of nuclear dealings between India and the US, especially when Washington reneged over promised supplies for the Tarapur nuclear plant, India’s belief that it must have the fundamental right to reprocess also allows it strategic as well as political autonomy.
The sources said both sides would still have to negotiate a strategic fuel reserve, meaning uninterrupted supply of fuel for use in its 14 safeguarded, civilian reactors. This, however, was a side concern.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 11, 2007 : When National Security Adviser M K Narayanan sits down to negotiate with his US counterpart Steve Hadley next week on July 16-17, the composition of his delegation is a sure signal that the nuclear deal currently being negotiated between the two sides is in its final stages.
Apart from Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon and India’s ambassador to Singapore S. Jaishanker, the presence of Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar on the high-powered Indian side indicates not only that the Department of Atomic Energy has come on board, but that the entire Indian establishment is speaking with one voice.
In fact, an unusual telephone conversation between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US president George Bush this evening, confirming that Narayanan & Co will be visiting the US for talks with Hadley, also signals the American willingness to give a political thrust to the deal at the highest level.
The visit of India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen to India, for consultations with the PM last week, further establishes the point that the endgame is near.
Highly placed sources said everything now depends on the US side to give India the right to reprocess spent fuel. Delhi has already said that the reprocessed fuel will not be used in its military programme.
It is not clear whether Bush indicated as much to Manmohan Singh during the telephone call, which is that the US is willing to give India the right to reprocess.
However, if Narayanan is able to pull this off with the Americans next week, then the deal is as good as done.
A signature ceremony would then become a formality, possibly between the two foreign ministers. The PM, in a meeting with women journalists last week had said that he will be traveling to the US for the UN General Assembly when he would meet Bush.
The sources pointed out that it was Narayanan’s offer to Hadley last month, on Delhi’s willingness to constitute a separate storage facility for the spent fuel that would be subject to additional safeguards and inspections, that seems to have broken the deadlock.
Naturally, that offer had the consent of Kakodkar and therefore, the entire atomic energy establishment. It also indicated that this was the limit to which Delhi was prepared to go.
This offer of a safeguarded storage facility, the sources felt, should also take care of the concerns that the US had over the reprocessed fuel being possibly used for India’s military programme.
Considering the bitter past history of nuclear dealings between India and the US, especially when Washington reneged over promised supplies for the Tarapur nuclear plant, India’s belief that it must have the fundamental right to reprocess also allows it strategic as well as political autonomy.
The sources said both sides would still have to negotiate a strategic fuel reserve, meaning uninterrupted supply of fuel for use in its 14 safeguarded, civilian reactors. This, however, was a side concern.
ENDS
Karma vs nukes in India
JYOTI MALHOTRA
Gulf News, Dubai, August 2007
As India and the US negotiated a new path-breaking nuclear deal a fortnight ago, an ancient, karmic ritual was playing itself out over the Indo-Gangetic plain. Hundreds of people were dying, thousands more marooned as flood-waters from an unusually active monsoon submerged large tracts of land.
On television, meanwhile, smart men in smartly-tailored suits in Delhi and Washington DC announced special privileges for India in the new world order. Back there in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where the flood fury has been the worst, women spread their thin, cotton saris around their children, in the full knowledge that destiny was supreme. Entire villages just sat like that for hours waiting for the waters to ebb.
Which, then, was the real India? The one pumping new nuclear iron, preening in the knowledge that the US has, in a matter of a couple of years, made it a card-carrying member of the exclusive atomic club? Or the one that evokes stereotypical, but nevertheless too-true images of malnutritioned children with stomachs so bloated they could compare with large parts of sub-Saharan Africa?
It’s a question that Indians, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of independence from the British empire this month, are still struggling to answer.
Perhaps, India does live in several centuries at the same time. Some years ago when an indigenously constructed rocket was placed on several bullock-carts and transported to the firing range in Sriharikota in the deep south, because it was the easiest way to get there, the image gave way to a collective mirth. It easily remains the most evocative symbol of the evolution of India.
The last fortnight has been witness to another major milestone. After two years of tough negotiations, the US has finally agreed to provide an uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel for India’s civilian nuclear programme. Significantly, India’s military programme remains secret, away from the prying eyes of international inspectors.
Meaning, while India gets Western help to build nuclear reactors that will produce the electricity so essential to sustain a 9 per cent growth – and indeed, import the nuclear fuel from the US and other nations to power those nuclear reactors -- India can continue making atomic bombs from its military arsenal.
In all but name, US officials concede, India has become the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power.
Certainly, this is no mean achievement in the exact week of India’s 60th anniversary of independence. Although for the mild-mannered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the criticism of the nuclear deal by his own allies, the Left parties, has been a bitter pill to swallow.
The Left criticism caused a national furore, the worst since the government came to power three years ago. And although the immediate crisis seems to have blown over, the sight of allies bitterly squabbling in public has confirmed national perceptions that the alliance is shakier than before.
The Left criticism is that the nuclear deal ties India down into an American embrace, which it cannot allow to happen. Government sources argue the Left is unhappy because the nuclear deal, which considerably strengthens India, actually challenges China’s economic and military dominance in Asia. Certainly, the last has not been heard on this score.
Certainly, too, India’s domestic travails cannot compare with the situation in South Asia. In this independence week, the sight of India straddling two military dictatorships – the Bangladesh military is certainly the power behind caretaker president Fakhruddin Ahmed’s throne – cannot be a vote for the Athenian democratic ideal.
On the other hand, in the 60 years since the departure of the British and even though Pakistan continues to be ruled by the all-powerful army, civil society in Pakistan is possibly experiencing its most robust period.
The irony is that the expression of free speech, protest and demonstration galvanising Pakistan today could not have taken place without General Pervez Musharraf’s pursuit of enlightened moderation at home.
The General’s been in power for nine years and seems determined to stay on for a bit. But even if he’s toppled by a combination of forces, which may or may not include the US, it must be said that if he hadn’t encouraged the Pakistani spirit, it may never considered escaping from its genie-bottle.
The genie won’t swallow up Musharraf, it’ll do worse, it’ll spread the democratic infection. Looks like Musharraf’s most honourable exit strategy now is to guide Pakistan’s political churning in the direction of truly free elections, and hope to return as an elected leader.
As for Bangladesh, army chief General Moeen U. Ahmed has sent India a major signal that it will not countenance any religious extremism, by hanging six fundamentalists a couple of months ago.
For an army chief, Ahmed’s democratic credentials are pretty irrepressible. Although he has had major political leaders thrown into jail, he has also come out strongly against the assassination of `Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. That one statement has had the power of shaking the core of Bangladeshi politics.
So in the 60th year of its existence, is South Asia on the cusp of dramatic change? All the signs point in that direction. The region’s socio-economic indicators remain abysmal, and at least for India-Pakistan, the lingering pain of partition is exacerbated by the lack of continuing political trust.
Watch out for the straws in the wind, though. I will argue that the groundswell of public opinion will grow and grow so high and so strong that it has the capacity to sweep the leadership off its feet.
It was the power of public opinion that gave South Asia its freedom 60 years ago. Perhaps the time is ripe for a second coming.
ENDS
Gulf News, Dubai, August 2007
As India and the US negotiated a new path-breaking nuclear deal a fortnight ago, an ancient, karmic ritual was playing itself out over the Indo-Gangetic plain. Hundreds of people were dying, thousands more marooned as flood-waters from an unusually active monsoon submerged large tracts of land.
On television, meanwhile, smart men in smartly-tailored suits in Delhi and Washington DC announced special privileges for India in the new world order. Back there in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where the flood fury has been the worst, women spread their thin, cotton saris around their children, in the full knowledge that destiny was supreme. Entire villages just sat like that for hours waiting for the waters to ebb.
Which, then, was the real India? The one pumping new nuclear iron, preening in the knowledge that the US has, in a matter of a couple of years, made it a card-carrying member of the exclusive atomic club? Or the one that evokes stereotypical, but nevertheless too-true images of malnutritioned children with stomachs so bloated they could compare with large parts of sub-Saharan Africa?
It’s a question that Indians, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of independence from the British empire this month, are still struggling to answer.
Perhaps, India does live in several centuries at the same time. Some years ago when an indigenously constructed rocket was placed on several bullock-carts and transported to the firing range in Sriharikota in the deep south, because it was the easiest way to get there, the image gave way to a collective mirth. It easily remains the most evocative symbol of the evolution of India.
The last fortnight has been witness to another major milestone. After two years of tough negotiations, the US has finally agreed to provide an uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel for India’s civilian nuclear programme. Significantly, India’s military programme remains secret, away from the prying eyes of international inspectors.
Meaning, while India gets Western help to build nuclear reactors that will produce the electricity so essential to sustain a 9 per cent growth – and indeed, import the nuclear fuel from the US and other nations to power those nuclear reactors -- India can continue making atomic bombs from its military arsenal.
In all but name, US officials concede, India has become the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power.
Certainly, this is no mean achievement in the exact week of India’s 60th anniversary of independence. Although for the mild-mannered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the criticism of the nuclear deal by his own allies, the Left parties, has been a bitter pill to swallow.
The Left criticism caused a national furore, the worst since the government came to power three years ago. And although the immediate crisis seems to have blown over, the sight of allies bitterly squabbling in public has confirmed national perceptions that the alliance is shakier than before.
The Left criticism is that the nuclear deal ties India down into an American embrace, which it cannot allow to happen. Government sources argue the Left is unhappy because the nuclear deal, which considerably strengthens India, actually challenges China’s economic and military dominance in Asia. Certainly, the last has not been heard on this score.
Certainly, too, India’s domestic travails cannot compare with the situation in South Asia. In this independence week, the sight of India straddling two military dictatorships – the Bangladesh military is certainly the power behind caretaker president Fakhruddin Ahmed’s throne – cannot be a vote for the Athenian democratic ideal.
On the other hand, in the 60 years since the departure of the British and even though Pakistan continues to be ruled by the all-powerful army, civil society in Pakistan is possibly experiencing its most robust period.
The irony is that the expression of free speech, protest and demonstration galvanising Pakistan today could not have taken place without General Pervez Musharraf’s pursuit of enlightened moderation at home.
The General’s been in power for nine years and seems determined to stay on for a bit. But even if he’s toppled by a combination of forces, which may or may not include the US, it must be said that if he hadn’t encouraged the Pakistani spirit, it may never considered escaping from its genie-bottle.
The genie won’t swallow up Musharraf, it’ll do worse, it’ll spread the democratic infection. Looks like Musharraf’s most honourable exit strategy now is to guide Pakistan’s political churning in the direction of truly free elections, and hope to return as an elected leader.
As for Bangladesh, army chief General Moeen U. Ahmed has sent India a major signal that it will not countenance any religious extremism, by hanging six fundamentalists a couple of months ago.
For an army chief, Ahmed’s democratic credentials are pretty irrepressible. Although he has had major political leaders thrown into jail, he has also come out strongly against the assassination of `Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. That one statement has had the power of shaking the core of Bangladeshi politics.
So in the 60th year of its existence, is South Asia on the cusp of dramatic change? All the signs point in that direction. The region’s socio-economic indicators remain abysmal, and at least for India-Pakistan, the lingering pain of partition is exacerbated by the lack of continuing political trust.
Watch out for the straws in the wind, though. I will argue that the groundswell of public opinion will grow and grow so high and so strong that it has the capacity to sweep the leadership off its feet.
It was the power of public opinion that gave South Asia its freedom 60 years ago. Perhaps the time is ripe for a second coming.
ENDS
Happy Birthday Yechury, says PM
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 12, 2007 : The occasion of CPM leader Sitaram Yechury’s birthday today provided Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the perfect opportunity to take the edge off the tension between himself and the Left parties, with the PM calling the Left leader and wishing him all the best in the years ahead.
Having firmly reestablished his position, not only on the Indo-US nuclear deal, but also within the political spectrum – as a result of the national furore generated by his interview in The Telegraph over the weekend -- the PM clearly seemed to want to reach out to the Left, albeit from a position of strength.
In the wake of the interview, where he dared the Left to withdraw support from his government, Left leaders insisted again today they would not destabilise the government, even if they remained unhappy about the government’s growing embrace with the US.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat told a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram that the PM ``is very sensitive on the government's relations with the US. But this is not a matter of sensitivity alone. This is an issue of serious import.’’
However, highly placed sources confirmed that Yechury, who was in Andhra Pradesh today, will be meeting the PM in Delhi tomorrow. CPI leader D.Raja reiterated that the Left would not withdraw support to the UPA.
While the crisis seems to have blown over for the time being, the PM also seemed all set to make a ``factual’’ and not a ``political statement’’ on the nuclear deal when Parliament meets tomorrow. The sources said the PM did not want to exacerbate the crisis in any way.
The PM’s statement in both Houses will be made in the afternoon.
Under the circumstances, the PM will essentially reiterate the facts that have already been put out in the public domain about the 123 agreement by National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and India’s top scientists like atomic chief Anil Kakodkar and R. Chidambaram.
First of all, the PM will state that the agreement meets all the requirements and addresses all the concerns of the House.
He will point out that the agreement is only about civilian nuclear energy issues between the two countries, how the US has agreed to make uninterrupted fuel supplies to India’s safeguarded, civil nuclear energy reactors, and how the US has even promised to commit alternate supplies from Russia, France and the UK in case the agreement has to cease due to ``unforeseen’’ circumstances.
He is expected to point to comments to his own August 17 statement on the nuclear deal, including by Sitaram Yechury, who had then said that if India’s top scientists ``were happy’’ with the deal, the Left would also be satisfied.
The PM’s statement will imply that India’s strategic independence will not be compromised and that the 123 agreement has nothing to do with India’s military programme. He is expected to leave that to the nuclear debate that will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday in Parliament.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 12, 2007 : The occasion of CPM leader Sitaram Yechury’s birthday today provided Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the perfect opportunity to take the edge off the tension between himself and the Left parties, with the PM calling the Left leader and wishing him all the best in the years ahead.
Having firmly reestablished his position, not only on the Indo-US nuclear deal, but also within the political spectrum – as a result of the national furore generated by his interview in The Telegraph over the weekend -- the PM clearly seemed to want to reach out to the Left, albeit from a position of strength.
In the wake of the interview, where he dared the Left to withdraw support from his government, Left leaders insisted again today they would not destabilise the government, even if they remained unhappy about the government’s growing embrace with the US.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat told a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram that the PM ``is very sensitive on the government's relations with the US. But this is not a matter of sensitivity alone. This is an issue of serious import.’’
However, highly placed sources confirmed that Yechury, who was in Andhra Pradesh today, will be meeting the PM in Delhi tomorrow. CPI leader D.Raja reiterated that the Left would not withdraw support to the UPA.
While the crisis seems to have blown over for the time being, the PM also seemed all set to make a ``factual’’ and not a ``political statement’’ on the nuclear deal when Parliament meets tomorrow. The sources said the PM did not want to exacerbate the crisis in any way.
The PM’s statement in both Houses will be made in the afternoon.
Under the circumstances, the PM will essentially reiterate the facts that have already been put out in the public domain about the 123 agreement by National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and India’s top scientists like atomic chief Anil Kakodkar and R. Chidambaram.
First of all, the PM will state that the agreement meets all the requirements and addresses all the concerns of the House.
He will point out that the agreement is only about civilian nuclear energy issues between the two countries, how the US has agreed to make uninterrupted fuel supplies to India’s safeguarded, civil nuclear energy reactors, and how the US has even promised to commit alternate supplies from Russia, France and the UK in case the agreement has to cease due to ``unforeseen’’ circumstances.
He is expected to point to comments to his own August 17 statement on the nuclear deal, including by Sitaram Yechury, who had then said that if India’s top scientists ``were happy’’ with the deal, the Left would also be satisfied.
The PM’s statement will imply that India’s strategic independence will not be compromised and that the 123 agreement has nothing to do with India’s military programme. He is expected to leave that to the nuclear debate that will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday in Parliament.
ENDS
Shyam Saran leads MEA blitz
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 9, 2007 : Former foreign secretary and PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran will lead a Foreign Office blitzkrieg, as of this weekend, to key countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to rally support for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Saran is travelling to Russia, Germany, Brazil and Argentina from Sunday itself, while the two seniormost secretaries in the ministry of external affairs, Nalin Surie and N. Ravi, besides the Foreign Secretary, will share the rest of the 45-member NSG between themselves.
Although the 123 agreement makes clear that NSG clearance for the deal is a responsibility of the US, India clearly wants to marshal support so that all sides are covered.
Leading the list of countries to watch out for is China, although Austria, Sweden, Denmark and New Zealand are also said to have been critical of US efforts to bring India into the nuclear sanctum sanctorum.
But MEA officials pointed out that ``there’s a huge difference between before and after. Once the deal has been done, it will be a completely different sight to see who actually opposes the Americans.’’
Simultaneously, Anil Kakokdar’s Department of Atomic Energy, which played a key role in the 123 negotiations, will launch its own initiative with the IAEA so as to deliver an India-specific safeguards agreement.
The NSG, which takes its role as a watchdog body seriously, requires a consensus to clear the deal. Once that happens, as does the IAEA agreement, the 123 will return to the US Congress for an up-down vote.
The choice of Russia as the first country to which India is sending an envoy is said to signal Delhi’s keenness to show them the 123 agreement first-hand. Moreover, Moscow has been named as one of three alternative suppliers for nuclear fuel, just in case India conducts a nuclear test and the US stops all cooperation. This, officials said, only underlines Moscow’s importance for the Indo-US deal.
Germany is key because it will become the president of the NSG in a few months, Brazil is part of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) triumvirate and Argentina is a major nation in South America.
Still, all eyes are on China and how it will respond to the overt Indian request for support for the deal.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Li Jiancho indicated to PTI in Beijing a couple of days ago that Beijing’s views may be different from 2005 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush had first signed the agreement.
``It is hoped that the international community can explore and properly handle the issue by creative thinking,’’ Liu said.
Former Chinese ambassador to Indian Cheng Ruisheng said he believed that this showed that Beijing would not adopt a ``dogmatic’’ stance, said PTI.
Two years ago, though, the official Chinese media had been very critical, saying that it would ``deal a hard blow to America’s leading role in the global proliferation prevention system.’’
ENDS
New Delhi, August 9, 2007 : Former foreign secretary and PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran will lead a Foreign Office blitzkrieg, as of this weekend, to key countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to rally support for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Saran is travelling to Russia, Germany, Brazil and Argentina from Sunday itself, while the two seniormost secretaries in the ministry of external affairs, Nalin Surie and N. Ravi, besides the Foreign Secretary, will share the rest of the 45-member NSG between themselves.
Although the 123 agreement makes clear that NSG clearance for the deal is a responsibility of the US, India clearly wants to marshal support so that all sides are covered.
Leading the list of countries to watch out for is China, although Austria, Sweden, Denmark and New Zealand are also said to have been critical of US efforts to bring India into the nuclear sanctum sanctorum.
But MEA officials pointed out that ``there’s a huge difference between before and after. Once the deal has been done, it will be a completely different sight to see who actually opposes the Americans.’’
Simultaneously, Anil Kakokdar’s Department of Atomic Energy, which played a key role in the 123 negotiations, will launch its own initiative with the IAEA so as to deliver an India-specific safeguards agreement.
The NSG, which takes its role as a watchdog body seriously, requires a consensus to clear the deal. Once that happens, as does the IAEA agreement, the 123 will return to the US Congress for an up-down vote.
The choice of Russia as the first country to which India is sending an envoy is said to signal Delhi’s keenness to show them the 123 agreement first-hand. Moreover, Moscow has been named as one of three alternative suppliers for nuclear fuel, just in case India conducts a nuclear test and the US stops all cooperation. This, officials said, only underlines Moscow’s importance for the Indo-US deal.
Germany is key because it will become the president of the NSG in a few months, Brazil is part of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) triumvirate and Argentina is a major nation in South America.
Still, all eyes are on China and how it will respond to the overt Indian request for support for the deal.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Li Jiancho indicated to PTI in Beijing a couple of days ago that Beijing’s views may be different from 2005 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush had first signed the agreement.
``It is hoped that the international community can explore and properly handle the issue by creative thinking,’’ Liu said.
Former Chinese ambassador to Indian Cheng Ruisheng said he believed that this showed that Beijing would not adopt a ``dogmatic’’ stance, said PTI.
Two years ago, though, the official Chinese media had been very critical, saying that it would ``deal a hard blow to America’s leading role in the global proliferation prevention system.’’
ENDS
India's covert wars
JYOTI MALHOTRA
The Telegraph, August 2007
In an unusual display of openness early this year, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, invited Shashi Tharoor, a much-publicised face of India abroad and a rank outsider, to deliver the first R N Kao Memorial Lecture in Delhi.
It was an impressive gathering, presided over by National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, for which a variety of former spy masters had flown in from across the country. Tharoor spoke about ``India and global security : Leveraging soft power,’’ arguing that the culture of debate and discussion that comes naturally to Indians should be extended to intelligence agencies, even if secrecy is their preferred weapon of action.
By all accounts, R N Kao would have liked the idea. India’s top spymaster was made the first head of R&W by Indira Gandhi after it was separated from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1968. In his time, spies did not merely collect and analyse information, they had a chameleon-like ability to identify with both the oppressor and the oppressed. They spoke multiple languages. They built relations with the CIA and the KGB and the Afghan mujahideen, all at the same time. Spying didn’t take place at the speed of 24-hour news channels, nor were spy stories grist for the newspaper mill.
Instead, spying was an intimate, time-consuming process, where the spy staked out his potential victim or source with the patience of someone in love. You got to know him or her well. Alternatively, if you were collating information and analysing it, you pursued the maze and didn’t rest until it was cleared. You had a sense of history. You couldn’t be a good spy if you didn’t know what your weaknesses were.
Most Indians believe, among them former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, that R&AW’s finest hour was the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh. Considering this happened a mere three years after Kao’s creation of R&AW, and allowed Mrs Gandhi to emerge as one of the most powerful leaders in the world, the event also set the stage for a muscular foreign policy.
The liberation of Bangladesh was clearly Mrs Gandhi’s finest hour. The manner in which Bangladeshis rose to take charge of their country – albeit with some help from R&AW with aid for its Mukti Bahini – has no parallel in world history.
Back home, the 1971 events allowed Kao to create the psychological warfare (Psywar) division, which kept the international spotlight on brutalities committed by West Pakistanis. Indira Gandhi’s tour of the major nations, including the US, to sensitise them about the situation in the sub-continent – millions of refugees from East Bengal were pouring into India – was a perfect prequel to the `brahmastra’ that followed. Pakistan cracked up like a brittle pancake, and continues to vent much of its angst by unleashing terror in Punjab, Kashmir and now, in the rest of India.
Even as it covertly aided the Mukti Bahini, R&AW raids into the Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) in the north-east, simultaneously destroyed sanctuaries and training camps of the Mizo National Front (MNF) as well as the Nagas. Phizo had, in fact, been in touch with the ISI since 1956, and later leaders like Isaac Swu, Muivah and Mowu Angami (who was later killed) had travelled via the Kachin state of Burma to Yunnan , a southern Chinese province for arms training.
Mizo leaders like Laldenga, too, were in touch both with the ISI and the Chinese, seeking arms training and financial assistance. The Chinese agreed to train the Mizo National Front (MNF) if they could reach Yunnan on their own.
R&AW’s decision to smash insurgent sanctuaries in the CHT, killing both Nagas and Mizos, played a big role in partially ending the Naga insurgency. As for Laldenga, he fled to West Pakistan, via Rangoon, but later got fed up with his ISI handlers. He escaped from Pakistan and reached Geneva in 1975, where a joint R&AW-IB team began talks with him. But Mrs Gandhi was soon to impose Emergency and lose power in 1977. The Mizos had to wait for her to return in 1980 before Kao – and the next R&AW chief Gary Saxena – as well as the late G. Parthasarathi, her trusted adviser, could pick up the threads. Only by 1985 did peace return to Mizoram when Laldenga became its chief minister.
B. Raman, a former R&AW spy, who has just written a book about his former organization called the `Kaoboys of R&AW’ (a humorous reference to the undying loyalty commanded by the legendary spymaster), points out that one of R&AW’s major drawbacks has been ``a lack of man management…especially in the later years, where R&AW should have been blended into a team, there’s a clear absence of an esprit de corps.’’
One clear example of lack of coordination between R&AW, IB and the West Bengal state police occurred during the Purulia arms drop in 1998. Turns out that when Peter Bleach, an ex-pilot of the Royal Air Force was hired to fly the plane to Purulia, Bleach went to Air Headquarters in the UK and told them what he was going to do. Subsequently, clear and pin-pointed intelligence was given to R&AW, but it didn’t pass it on.
The failure to detect the Pakistani incursion into Kargil until May 1999, when one IB alert a year before had picket up unusual activity across the border in Baltistan, must count for another drawback to the R&AW’s high-profile Aviation Research Centre (ARC). But it was left to the nomadic Gujjar shepherds who roam the hills to pick out the aliens in the Kargil hills.
However, Naresh Chandra feels that R&AW’s picking up of the conversation between Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and his colleague Gen. Aziz, in Beijing during the Kargil (when Aziz said to Musharraf in crude Urdu, ``Uski (India) tooti mere haath main hai’’), must be one of R&AW’s best moments. Asked if the release of the conversation transcript did not compromise both technical and human intelligence, Chandra said, ``Releasing the transcript was a political decision, R&AW did a very good job.’’ That transcript was one element in the diplomatic battle that finally persuaded Bill Clinton to force Nawaz Sharif to order his forces back behind the LoC.
India’s intelligence-gathering efforts have largely focussed on Pakistan, the US, China and the neighbourhood. Through the 80s and 90s, including after the Mumbai blasts in 1993, Delhi tried hard to get the US to label Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, with no success (although the Vajpayee government did manage something in that direction). Delhi argued that a lot of CIA arms were actually siphoned off by the ISI to be used in Punjab and Kashmir – but the argument fell on deaf ears.
Under Rajiv Gandhi, Delhi sought to pursue a multi-dimensional strategy on Pakistan. That is, cooperative relations with its people, covert action where possible (such as in Sind, which provoked Benazir Bhutto to tell her ISI chief, ``give up your Sikh card and India will give up its Sind card’’) and maintaining good relations with both the pro-Pakistan Afghan mujahideen as well as with the Tajik opposition led Ahmad Shah Masood. With the fall of the Taliban after 9/11, Delhi moved quickly to establish consulates in Heart, Jalalabad and Kandahar, to prevent Pakistan from regaining strategic depth in southern Afghanistan.
Unlike Bangladesh, though, India’s Sri Lanka intervention has been a mixed bag. Covert assistance for the LTTE in the early 80s ordered by Indira Gandhi enabled the government to meet aspirations of the Sri Lanka Tamils, but by the time Rajiv Gandhi signed the Indo-Sri Lanka accord, the tables had been turned completely. Once again, different agencies of the government didn’t know what the other was doing. Gen. Sundarji is said to have promised Rajiv it would take a month to accomplish his mission to disarm the LTTE. Ultimately, VP Singh ordered the IPKF back after three years, without completing the job it had set out to do.
Still, as Shashi Tharoor put it at the R&AW tea-party in January, the 80s were a grand decade, with Delhi helping a large number of African countries like Uganda (Milton Obote invited R&AW in after Idi Amin chased the Indians out) and Ghana set up intelligence agencies, besides providing key support to the African National Congress in South Africa and SWAPO in Namibia.
Analysts like B. Raman point out that for an argumentative society, Indians have largely refused to ask questions or debate failures. Lt. Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brig. Baghat wrote a report on the failure of the Sino-Indian war in 1962, while the Subrahmanyam committee went into a detailed look at the Kargil conflict, but Parliament has either not been shown the reports or allowed to discuss it.
Meanwhile, there remains the question of a cover-up into the Rabinder Singh affair, the R&AW double agent who escaped, via Kathmandu, to the US in 2004. The matter shook the agency as well as India, but an investigation into the counter-insurgency failure doesn’t seem to have cleaned out any cobwebs. Especially since a number of those allegedly involved in the fiasco are posted in key countries today.
So what’s the score on India’s covert operations these 60 years? Johnnie Walker, the ultimate Bollywood comedian, has a memorable line in one of his films : Fifty-fifty, he says, with regard to the happiness-ever-after formula. It could easily apply to Delhi’s report card since independence.
ENDS
The Telegraph, August 2007
In an unusual display of openness early this year, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, invited Shashi Tharoor, a much-publicised face of India abroad and a rank outsider, to deliver the first R N Kao Memorial Lecture in Delhi.
It was an impressive gathering, presided over by National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, for which a variety of former spy masters had flown in from across the country. Tharoor spoke about ``India and global security : Leveraging soft power,’’ arguing that the culture of debate and discussion that comes naturally to Indians should be extended to intelligence agencies, even if secrecy is their preferred weapon of action.
By all accounts, R N Kao would have liked the idea. India’s top spymaster was made the first head of R&W by Indira Gandhi after it was separated from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1968. In his time, spies did not merely collect and analyse information, they had a chameleon-like ability to identify with both the oppressor and the oppressed. They spoke multiple languages. They built relations with the CIA and the KGB and the Afghan mujahideen, all at the same time. Spying didn’t take place at the speed of 24-hour news channels, nor were spy stories grist for the newspaper mill.
Instead, spying was an intimate, time-consuming process, where the spy staked out his potential victim or source with the patience of someone in love. You got to know him or her well. Alternatively, if you were collating information and analysing it, you pursued the maze and didn’t rest until it was cleared. You had a sense of history. You couldn’t be a good spy if you didn’t know what your weaknesses were.
Most Indians believe, among them former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, that R&AW’s finest hour was the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh. Considering this happened a mere three years after Kao’s creation of R&AW, and allowed Mrs Gandhi to emerge as one of the most powerful leaders in the world, the event also set the stage for a muscular foreign policy.
The liberation of Bangladesh was clearly Mrs Gandhi’s finest hour. The manner in which Bangladeshis rose to take charge of their country – albeit with some help from R&AW with aid for its Mukti Bahini – has no parallel in world history.
Back home, the 1971 events allowed Kao to create the psychological warfare (Psywar) division, which kept the international spotlight on brutalities committed by West Pakistanis. Indira Gandhi’s tour of the major nations, including the US, to sensitise them about the situation in the sub-continent – millions of refugees from East Bengal were pouring into India – was a perfect prequel to the `brahmastra’ that followed. Pakistan cracked up like a brittle pancake, and continues to vent much of its angst by unleashing terror in Punjab, Kashmir and now, in the rest of India.
Even as it covertly aided the Mukti Bahini, R&AW raids into the Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) in the north-east, simultaneously destroyed sanctuaries and training camps of the Mizo National Front (MNF) as well as the Nagas. Phizo had, in fact, been in touch with the ISI since 1956, and later leaders like Isaac Swu, Muivah and Mowu Angami (who was later killed) had travelled via the Kachin state of Burma to Yunnan , a southern Chinese province for arms training.
Mizo leaders like Laldenga, too, were in touch both with the ISI and the Chinese, seeking arms training and financial assistance. The Chinese agreed to train the Mizo National Front (MNF) if they could reach Yunnan on their own.
R&AW’s decision to smash insurgent sanctuaries in the CHT, killing both Nagas and Mizos, played a big role in partially ending the Naga insurgency. As for Laldenga, he fled to West Pakistan, via Rangoon, but later got fed up with his ISI handlers. He escaped from Pakistan and reached Geneva in 1975, where a joint R&AW-IB team began talks with him. But Mrs Gandhi was soon to impose Emergency and lose power in 1977. The Mizos had to wait for her to return in 1980 before Kao – and the next R&AW chief Gary Saxena – as well as the late G. Parthasarathi, her trusted adviser, could pick up the threads. Only by 1985 did peace return to Mizoram when Laldenga became its chief minister.
B. Raman, a former R&AW spy, who has just written a book about his former organization called the `Kaoboys of R&AW’ (a humorous reference to the undying loyalty commanded by the legendary spymaster), points out that one of R&AW’s major drawbacks has been ``a lack of man management…especially in the later years, where R&AW should have been blended into a team, there’s a clear absence of an esprit de corps.’’
One clear example of lack of coordination between R&AW, IB and the West Bengal state police occurred during the Purulia arms drop in 1998. Turns out that when Peter Bleach, an ex-pilot of the Royal Air Force was hired to fly the plane to Purulia, Bleach went to Air Headquarters in the UK and told them what he was going to do. Subsequently, clear and pin-pointed intelligence was given to R&AW, but it didn’t pass it on.
The failure to detect the Pakistani incursion into Kargil until May 1999, when one IB alert a year before had picket up unusual activity across the border in Baltistan, must count for another drawback to the R&AW’s high-profile Aviation Research Centre (ARC). But it was left to the nomadic Gujjar shepherds who roam the hills to pick out the aliens in the Kargil hills.
However, Naresh Chandra feels that R&AW’s picking up of the conversation between Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and his colleague Gen. Aziz, in Beijing during the Kargil (when Aziz said to Musharraf in crude Urdu, ``Uski (India) tooti mere haath main hai’’), must be one of R&AW’s best moments. Asked if the release of the conversation transcript did not compromise both technical and human intelligence, Chandra said, ``Releasing the transcript was a political decision, R&AW did a very good job.’’ That transcript was one element in the diplomatic battle that finally persuaded Bill Clinton to force Nawaz Sharif to order his forces back behind the LoC.
India’s intelligence-gathering efforts have largely focussed on Pakistan, the US, China and the neighbourhood. Through the 80s and 90s, including after the Mumbai blasts in 1993, Delhi tried hard to get the US to label Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, with no success (although the Vajpayee government did manage something in that direction). Delhi argued that a lot of CIA arms were actually siphoned off by the ISI to be used in Punjab and Kashmir – but the argument fell on deaf ears.
Under Rajiv Gandhi, Delhi sought to pursue a multi-dimensional strategy on Pakistan. That is, cooperative relations with its people, covert action where possible (such as in Sind, which provoked Benazir Bhutto to tell her ISI chief, ``give up your Sikh card and India will give up its Sind card’’) and maintaining good relations with both the pro-Pakistan Afghan mujahideen as well as with the Tajik opposition led Ahmad Shah Masood. With the fall of the Taliban after 9/11, Delhi moved quickly to establish consulates in Heart, Jalalabad and Kandahar, to prevent Pakistan from regaining strategic depth in southern Afghanistan.
Unlike Bangladesh, though, India’s Sri Lanka intervention has been a mixed bag. Covert assistance for the LTTE in the early 80s ordered by Indira Gandhi enabled the government to meet aspirations of the Sri Lanka Tamils, but by the time Rajiv Gandhi signed the Indo-Sri Lanka accord, the tables had been turned completely. Once again, different agencies of the government didn’t know what the other was doing. Gen. Sundarji is said to have promised Rajiv it would take a month to accomplish his mission to disarm the LTTE. Ultimately, VP Singh ordered the IPKF back after three years, without completing the job it had set out to do.
Still, as Shashi Tharoor put it at the R&AW tea-party in January, the 80s were a grand decade, with Delhi helping a large number of African countries like Uganda (Milton Obote invited R&AW in after Idi Amin chased the Indians out) and Ghana set up intelligence agencies, besides providing key support to the African National Congress in South Africa and SWAPO in Namibia.
Analysts like B. Raman point out that for an argumentative society, Indians have largely refused to ask questions or debate failures. Lt. Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brig. Baghat wrote a report on the failure of the Sino-Indian war in 1962, while the Subrahmanyam committee went into a detailed look at the Kargil conflict, but Parliament has either not been shown the reports or allowed to discuss it.
Meanwhile, there remains the question of a cover-up into the Rabinder Singh affair, the R&AW double agent who escaped, via Kathmandu, to the US in 2004. The matter shook the agency as well as India, but an investigation into the counter-insurgency failure doesn’t seem to have cleaned out any cobwebs. Especially since a number of those allegedly involved in the fiasco are posted in key countries today.
So what’s the score on India’s covert operations these 60 years? Johnnie Walker, the ultimate Bollywood comedian, has a memorable line in one of his films : Fifty-fifty, he says, with regard to the happiness-ever-after formula. It could easily apply to Delhi’s report card since independence.
ENDS
BJP trashes nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 4, 2007 : The Left parties preferred a studied silence, while senior BJP leaders went into a huddle this evening at the residence of former Prime Minsiter Atal Behari Vajpayee to discuss the strategy they would undertake on the 123 nuclear agreement between India and the US.
Left party sources said they would carefully go over every clause of the 22-page agreement, but one leader eloquently pointed to the ``dharma sankat’’ or dilemma of the Left. That is, if their friends the UNPA had decided to oppose the nuclear deal in parliament, what was the Left going to do?
Still, early reactions by the BJP as well as by key nuclear experts focused on the relationship of the 123 agreement with other US domestic laws, such as the Hyde Act, 2006 and the Atomic Act, 1954.
``It is the height of naivete for people to think that the 123 agreement can be read separately from the Hyde act. In fact the 123 text itself says it must be seen in that context,’’ said former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha.
According to the 123 text, if India conducts a nuclear test in the future and domestic laws kick in, then the US will ensure that other friendly countries step in and provide uninterrupted fuel supplies to India’s civilian programme.
Sinha pointed out that the Hyde Act clearly pointed to all termination of cooperation if India went ahead and conducted a test. He stressed that the Hyde act would supercede the 123 agreement and therefore the BJP ``retained all its reservations’’ on the UPA negotiations.
``You cannot expect a toddler to overrule his mother,’’ Sinha said, referring to the 123 agreement and the Hyde act.
Nuclear expert Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research, meanwhile, emphasized that even if countries like Russia and France were persuaded to supply fuel in place of the US, they would like at guidelines put out by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The NSG, would in turn, look at the provisions of the Hyde Act, and naturally, would not resume cooperation with India.
Asked how Kakodkar had agreed to such a deal, Karnad said, ``He is a very weak man. He has always avoided the hard option, that is to resign. That means he is pliable. The nuclear establishment is unhappy with the agreement.’’
However, pro-nuclear deal experts like C. Raja Mohan of Nanyang university, Singapore, pointed out that if the US had to go by the Hyde Act, why would it take the trouble to go through another six months of negotiations with India and formulate the 123 agreement.
``This is a political deal between India and the US, the Bush administration wanted it. That is how it must be seen,’’ Raja Mohan said.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 4, 2007 : The Left parties preferred a studied silence, while senior BJP leaders went into a huddle this evening at the residence of former Prime Minsiter Atal Behari Vajpayee to discuss the strategy they would undertake on the 123 nuclear agreement between India and the US.
Left party sources said they would carefully go over every clause of the 22-page agreement, but one leader eloquently pointed to the ``dharma sankat’’ or dilemma of the Left. That is, if their friends the UNPA had decided to oppose the nuclear deal in parliament, what was the Left going to do?
Still, early reactions by the BJP as well as by key nuclear experts focused on the relationship of the 123 agreement with other US domestic laws, such as the Hyde Act, 2006 and the Atomic Act, 1954.
``It is the height of naivete for people to think that the 123 agreement can be read separately from the Hyde act. In fact the 123 text itself says it must be seen in that context,’’ said former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha.
According to the 123 text, if India conducts a nuclear test in the future and domestic laws kick in, then the US will ensure that other friendly countries step in and provide uninterrupted fuel supplies to India’s civilian programme.
Sinha pointed out that the Hyde Act clearly pointed to all termination of cooperation if India went ahead and conducted a test. He stressed that the Hyde act would supercede the 123 agreement and therefore the BJP ``retained all its reservations’’ on the UPA negotiations.
``You cannot expect a toddler to overrule his mother,’’ Sinha said, referring to the 123 agreement and the Hyde act.
Nuclear expert Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research, meanwhile, emphasized that even if countries like Russia and France were persuaded to supply fuel in place of the US, they would like at guidelines put out by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The NSG, would in turn, look at the provisions of the Hyde Act, and naturally, would not resume cooperation with India.
Asked how Kakodkar had agreed to such a deal, Karnad said, ``He is a very weak man. He has always avoided the hard option, that is to resign. That means he is pliable. The nuclear establishment is unhappy with the agreement.’’
However, pro-nuclear deal experts like C. Raja Mohan of Nanyang university, Singapore, pointed out that if the US had to go by the Hyde Act, why would it take the trouble to go through another six months of negotiations with India and formulate the 123 agreement.
``This is a political deal between India and the US, the Bush administration wanted it. That is how it must be seen,’’ Raja Mohan said.
ENDS
Left studying nuke text
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 3, 2007 : The sound and fury over selling out to the US on the negotiation of the so-called 123 nuclear agreement seemed to have collapsed in a whimper, on the day the much-awaited draft was simultaneously released in Delhi and Washington.
The Left parties said they were still studying the text carefully, while the BJP was meeting this evening at the house of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee to formulate considered strategy in Parliament a week from now. Initial BJP reactions said their ``reservations remained.’’
But the fact that neither political grouping, which had virtually put the Manmohan Singh government on notice as it publicly opposed every step in the tortuous negotiation, had any significant criticism today, indicated they were unable to find a worthy `brahmastra’ with which to retaliate.
Meanwhile, the 22-page text, put on the website of the Ministry of External Affairs this morning without as much as an SMS warning, pointed towards the government’s complete self- confidence over the deal.
According to the text, the agreement will remain in force for 40 years, that is till 2048 AD, and for 10-year periods thereafter.
Although the formal signing still remains, the availability of the text brings the curtains down on a dramatic two-year-long negotiation, during which the MEA and even the prime minister’s office often seemed at war with Anil Kakodkar’s Department of Atomic Energy over the content of the discussions with the US.
The final product has incorporated most Indian demands, including the right to reprocess spent fuel, uninterrupted supply of fuel for India’s 14 safeguarded civilian reactors (and many more India hopes will be built) as well as a strategic fuel reserve.
Most importantly, this deal is only about the ``civilian’’ nuclear relationship between the two countries. The agreement completely omits any reference to India’s military programme, thereby allowing India to carry on producing fissile material and making bombs from the 8 nuclear reactors that are not open to international inspection.
Possibly the only major compromise on India’s part is that the text doesn’t name India as a nuclear weapons state, instead preferring the much-milder ``cooperation between two parties possessing advanced nuclear technology.’’
But here’s another surprise. There is absolutely no mention of the word ``test’’ that India may want to carry out in the hypothetical future. However, there is considerable, very delicately-worded language on the consequences of ``cessation of cooperation.’’
Meaning, the US has conceded that India retains the right to carry out a nuclear test if it so wishes to do so.
Analysts pointed out that India had not seen any reason to test even once after the 1998 tests at Pokharan. However, the Left-BJP groupings had insisted that India not relinquish the right of a ``voluntary’’ moratorium.
In fact, briefing the BJP delegation last week, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said if India indeed wanted to test, all it had to do was to give notice one year before and ``walk out of the agreement.’’
However, if India does test and all cooperation ceases on the part of the US, that is the US invokes the ``right to return’’ clause that is a key aspect of its domestic law, and disruption of fuel supplies occur, the US has promised to convene, along with India, ``a group of friendly supplier countries (including) Russia, France and the UK to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supplies to India.’’
Notably, China is absent from the list of ``friendly countries’’ the US will call upon to ensure uninterrupted fuel supplies for India’s civilian nuclear programme.
Interestingly, the text almost warns against the invocation of the ``right to return’’ clause, saying it will have ``profound implications’’ for the relationship. It goes on to point to the ``negative consequences’’ of termination on ongoing contracts and projects between the two countries.
Still, ``consent to reprocess’’ is in conjunction with India’s decision to establish a national reprocessing facility that will be additionally safeguarded by the IAEA.
It was this offer of double safeguards – the fuel for the nuclear reactors is safeguarded in the first place, and reprocessing it will attract the second set of safeguards -- surprisingly by none other than the DAE on the eve of the Heilingendamm meeting, that cracked the nuclear impasse between the two sides.
ENDS
New Delhi, August 3, 2007 : The sound and fury over selling out to the US on the negotiation of the so-called 123 nuclear agreement seemed to have collapsed in a whimper, on the day the much-awaited draft was simultaneously released in Delhi and Washington.
The Left parties said they were still studying the text carefully, while the BJP was meeting this evening at the house of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee to formulate considered strategy in Parliament a week from now. Initial BJP reactions said their ``reservations remained.’’
But the fact that neither political grouping, which had virtually put the Manmohan Singh government on notice as it publicly opposed every step in the tortuous negotiation, had any significant criticism today, indicated they were unable to find a worthy `brahmastra’ with which to retaliate.
Meanwhile, the 22-page text, put on the website of the Ministry of External Affairs this morning without as much as an SMS warning, pointed towards the government’s complete self- confidence over the deal.
According to the text, the agreement will remain in force for 40 years, that is till 2048 AD, and for 10-year periods thereafter.
Although the formal signing still remains, the availability of the text brings the curtains down on a dramatic two-year-long negotiation, during which the MEA and even the prime minister’s office often seemed at war with Anil Kakodkar’s Department of Atomic Energy over the content of the discussions with the US.
The final product has incorporated most Indian demands, including the right to reprocess spent fuel, uninterrupted supply of fuel for India’s 14 safeguarded civilian reactors (and many more India hopes will be built) as well as a strategic fuel reserve.
Most importantly, this deal is only about the ``civilian’’ nuclear relationship between the two countries. The agreement completely omits any reference to India’s military programme, thereby allowing India to carry on producing fissile material and making bombs from the 8 nuclear reactors that are not open to international inspection.
Possibly the only major compromise on India’s part is that the text doesn’t name India as a nuclear weapons state, instead preferring the much-milder ``cooperation between two parties possessing advanced nuclear technology.’’
But here’s another surprise. There is absolutely no mention of the word ``test’’ that India may want to carry out in the hypothetical future. However, there is considerable, very delicately-worded language on the consequences of ``cessation of cooperation.’’
Meaning, the US has conceded that India retains the right to carry out a nuclear test if it so wishes to do so.
Analysts pointed out that India had not seen any reason to test even once after the 1998 tests at Pokharan. However, the Left-BJP groupings had insisted that India not relinquish the right of a ``voluntary’’ moratorium.
In fact, briefing the BJP delegation last week, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said if India indeed wanted to test, all it had to do was to give notice one year before and ``walk out of the agreement.’’
However, if India does test and all cooperation ceases on the part of the US, that is the US invokes the ``right to return’’ clause that is a key aspect of its domestic law, and disruption of fuel supplies occur, the US has promised to convene, along with India, ``a group of friendly supplier countries (including) Russia, France and the UK to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supplies to India.’’
Notably, China is absent from the list of ``friendly countries’’ the US will call upon to ensure uninterrupted fuel supplies for India’s civilian nuclear programme.
Interestingly, the text almost warns against the invocation of the ``right to return’’ clause, saying it will have ``profound implications’’ for the relationship. It goes on to point to the ``negative consequences’’ of termination on ongoing contracts and projects between the two countries.
Still, ``consent to reprocess’’ is in conjunction with India’s decision to establish a national reprocessing facility that will be additionally safeguarded by the IAEA.
It was this offer of double safeguards – the fuel for the nuclear reactors is safeguarded in the first place, and reprocessing it will attract the second set of safeguards -- surprisingly by none other than the DAE on the eve of the Heilingendamm meeting, that cracked the nuclear impasse between the two sides.
ENDS
Sonia's going to the UN
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 3, 2007 : Restaking her claim to the Mahatma’s legacy, Sonia Gandhi is aiming at a high-profile international debut at the plenary session of the UN General Assembly in New York on October 2.
It’s all very hush-hush, but fact is, that both the Congress party as well as the Ministry of External Affairs are furiously working towards creating a perfect constellation of stars for the Congress president.
For a start, India persuaded a record 142 countries to co-sponsor a resolution in June proposing that October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, be named International Non-Violence Day.
MEA sources pointed out that the Satyagraha Conference, organised by the Congress party in January to commemorate 100 years of the Mahatma’s launch of satyagraha as an instrument of non-violence, had pushed to give October 2 international status.
So Sonia Gandhi, likely to be accompanied by her son Rahul and key members of the Congress party, will speak at the UN on October 2.
Clearly, though, Sonia’s possessive feelings about the Mahatma’s legacy will be underlined with a trip to South Africa this month.
Mixing memory and contemporary politics, she will give a speech at a Cape Town think-tank, plus visit the major Gandhi sites, such as Durban, Phoenix and Johannesburg. She will also meet Nelson Mandela and wants to go to Robben Island, where he spent 26 years in jail.
She will also visit the headquarters of the African National Congress in Johannesburg.
Sonia’s desire to speak at the UN General Assembly has, meanwhile, thrown a spanner in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s own schedule at the UN. India’s turn to speak at the UN is on September 28, which is much too close to October 2.
Significantly, South Block will also decide this week whether the PM makes a flying visit to US President George Bush’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, in early September or not, as a thanksgiving tour to Bush for pushing the Indo-UD nuclear deal.
If he does go to Crawford, despite Left pressure, he might skip the UNGA altogether. If he doesn’t go, then he and Sonia Gandhi may well be in New York on consecutive weeks.
ENDS
ENDS
New Delhi, August 3, 2007 : Restaking her claim to the Mahatma’s legacy, Sonia Gandhi is aiming at a high-profile international debut at the plenary session of the UN General Assembly in New York on October 2.
It’s all very hush-hush, but fact is, that both the Congress party as well as the Ministry of External Affairs are furiously working towards creating a perfect constellation of stars for the Congress president.
For a start, India persuaded a record 142 countries to co-sponsor a resolution in June proposing that October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, be named International Non-Violence Day.
MEA sources pointed out that the Satyagraha Conference, organised by the Congress party in January to commemorate 100 years of the Mahatma’s launch of satyagraha as an instrument of non-violence, had pushed to give October 2 international status.
So Sonia Gandhi, likely to be accompanied by her son Rahul and key members of the Congress party, will speak at the UN on October 2.
Clearly, though, Sonia’s possessive feelings about the Mahatma’s legacy will be underlined with a trip to South Africa this month.
Mixing memory and contemporary politics, she will give a speech at a Cape Town think-tank, plus visit the major Gandhi sites, such as Durban, Phoenix and Johannesburg. She will also meet Nelson Mandela and wants to go to Robben Island, where he spent 26 years in jail.
She will also visit the headquarters of the African National Congress in Johannesburg.
Sonia’s desire to speak at the UN General Assembly has, meanwhile, thrown a spanner in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s own schedule at the UN. India’s turn to speak at the UN is on September 28, which is much too close to October 2.
Significantly, South Block will also decide this week whether the PM makes a flying visit to US President George Bush’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, in early September or not, as a thanksgiving tour to Bush for pushing the Indo-UD nuclear deal.
If he does go to Crawford, despite Left pressure, he might skip the UNGA altogether. If he doesn’t go, then he and Sonia Gandhi may well be in New York on consecutive weeks.
ENDS
ENDS
India's nuke knight in shining armour
JYOTI MALHOTRA
The Telegraph, July 2007
Take a bow, Maureen Dowd, George W. should go down in history at least for the one good turn he’s done to India.
The New York Times’ eminently readable columnist has livened up many a grim morning around the world for her easy ability to get her teeth into George Bush’s dyslexic foreign policy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan…in the endless roll call of things falling apart, she has argued, the centre has just refused to hold in Washington.
And then there is India, the jewel in the Bush administration’s crown, with whom last week’s nuclear deal is already dismembering the world as we have known it since Yalta-Potsam in 1945.
It was no coincidence that Messrs Stalin, Churchill/Attlee and Roosevelt/Truman, victors of the Great War, carved up the world between themselves and the French (although China came later, courtesy Nehru, in 1964). That is, the Permanent Five had the exclusive use of the veto in the UN Security Council and were the only ones privileged to exercise their nuclear ambitions.
And now there are six. In all but name, India is the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power. The delicious irony is that when Delhi went nuclear in 1998, it was the Americans, huffing and puffing, which had sanctimoniously laid on the sanctions. ``India has dug itself into a hole,’’ then secretary of state Madeleine Albright had warned.
Still, as India savours all the attention (two stories in nytimes.com on consecutive days), it is the gripping inside story of the nuclear deal that should entice Ramachandra Guha to add an appendix to his history of India.
Truth is, at any point of time since July 18, 2005, when Manmohan Singh smiled beatifically as he stood next to Bush in the White House, there were always two sets of negotiations : The first between Indian and American negotiators, and the other, between the Indians themselves. In the end, whatever the pathbreaking deal is about, it is also about the people involved who made the deal happen.
It all began in July 2005 when secretary of state Condoleezza Rice allowed herself to be charmed by then foreign minister K.Natwar Singh (he with the rose in the achkan buttonhole) on her 50th birthday. Not that they delivered the deal, but it was a small beginning.
As for the PM, he knew, even then, that unless atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar was on his plane, nothing would ever come of any negotiations. Then and now, in DC and in Delhi, Kakodkar may not be in the photo-op, but he would clear every negotiating tactic and strategy.
So even as the Indo-US press sat inside the White House in July 2005, waiting for both leaders to emerge for the joint press conference, national security adviser M K Narayanan could be seen poring over the draft. Narayanan knew someone had to play the role of devil’s advocate, and that the role would naturally fall upon him. For the last two years, he has gone over every clause with a toothcomb.
And yet it was Narayanan, who, around the time PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran was eased out of the nuclear negotiations in March, really took over the deal. A former head of the Intelligence Bureau, with the confidence of both Sonia Gandhi and the PM, Narayanan realised he would have to tame the scientists. They were part of the sacred Indian inheritance and public opinion would not have tolerated the ``dirty politician’’ to denigrate their achievements.
So Kakodkar and Ravi Grover, his able colleague, were given a long rope to articulate their concerns. The dissent, however, could not be free-floating, it had to come with creative solutions. Secret negotiations in South Africa and London, over March and April, appeared to go some distance, but there was still no agreement over reprocessing fuel or India’s right to test a nuclear weapon. Narayanan decided to turn the pressure on the scientists.
To their credit, Kakodkar-Grover came up with a sizzler of an answer : India would propose an additional facility, open to international inspection, in which the spent fuel from the civilian reactors would be stored before it was reprocessed. The simplicity of the solution took your breath away. Point is, the option had always existed with the scientists. Narayanan seemed to have decided that Kakodkar & Co could not deny the UPA a place in history.
So when he spoke to his counterpart, Steve Hadley, about a week before they – and PM and Bush – met in Heilingendamm, on the margins of the G-8 in Germany – Narayanan made the safeguarded facility proposal. At Heilingendamm, Manmohan Singh told Bush, who had nearly been felled by a stomach viral, ``We will not be able to do this deal without reprocessing rights.’’
In Delhi, a couple of days before the PM travelled to Germany, Nicholas Burns, the top US diplomat, had kept dragging his feet over reprocessing rights. Until his meeting with Narayanan, who told him bluntly that his boss, namely Bush, had promised India the same during his visit to India in March last year.
George W. was at the heart of the deal, had always been since those long-ago days in July 2005. He would have to be spoken to, again – and again.
The job to do that fell upon India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen. At the best of times, Sen is known to be a man of few words, but if there was ever a workaholic, it is he. The details of Sen’s relationship with Bush are hardly known, but the truth is that he softened him up. He started by getting to know everything there was to know about the man the world so loved to hate. Such as the fact that he wakes up at the crack of dawn, and is an exercise fiend. ``Bush loves India,’’ was all Sen would ever cryptically say.
In March 2006, when India and the US failed to break their nightlong deadlock before talks the next morning, it was Bush who told Rice : I want a deal with India. Last month in Germany and last week in Washington, Bush had much the same message for Hadley.
By now, India’s Fab Four – Narayanan, Sen, Kakodkar and foreign secretary Shivshanker Menon – had probably forgotten they still had a pulse or a heartbeat left.
So when Hadley called Narayanan in his hotel in Washington last week and said, En route to your meeting with the Vice-President (Dick Cheney) could you drop by please, Narayanan arrived at 1.30 pm. The day before the two men had agreed to use the Kakodkar formula to resolve the reprocessing issue.
Today, Hadley offered a solution on fuel supply assurances : In the hypothetical future if India conducted a test, and US laws on all cessation of cooperation kicked in, the US would ensure that other countries like France and Russia helped India out with alternative supplies.
It was all over by lunch last Friday afternoon. Two years and two days, that’s how long it had taken Bush to get India out of the hole Madeleine Albright had put Delhi into.
ENDS
The Telegraph, July 2007
Take a bow, Maureen Dowd, George W. should go down in history at least for the one good turn he’s done to India.
The New York Times’ eminently readable columnist has livened up many a grim morning around the world for her easy ability to get her teeth into George Bush’s dyslexic foreign policy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan…in the endless roll call of things falling apart, she has argued, the centre has just refused to hold in Washington.
And then there is India, the jewel in the Bush administration’s crown, with whom last week’s nuclear deal is already dismembering the world as we have known it since Yalta-Potsam in 1945.
It was no coincidence that Messrs Stalin, Churchill/Attlee and Roosevelt/Truman, victors of the Great War, carved up the world between themselves and the French (although China came later, courtesy Nehru, in 1964). That is, the Permanent Five had the exclusive use of the veto in the UN Security Council and were the only ones privileged to exercise their nuclear ambitions.
And now there are six. In all but name, India is the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power. The delicious irony is that when Delhi went nuclear in 1998, it was the Americans, huffing and puffing, which had sanctimoniously laid on the sanctions. ``India has dug itself into a hole,’’ then secretary of state Madeleine Albright had warned.
Still, as India savours all the attention (two stories in nytimes.com on consecutive days), it is the gripping inside story of the nuclear deal that should entice Ramachandra Guha to add an appendix to his history of India.
Truth is, at any point of time since July 18, 2005, when Manmohan Singh smiled beatifically as he stood next to Bush in the White House, there were always two sets of negotiations : The first between Indian and American negotiators, and the other, between the Indians themselves. In the end, whatever the pathbreaking deal is about, it is also about the people involved who made the deal happen.
It all began in July 2005 when secretary of state Condoleezza Rice allowed herself to be charmed by then foreign minister K.Natwar Singh (he with the rose in the achkan buttonhole) on her 50th birthday. Not that they delivered the deal, but it was a small beginning.
As for the PM, he knew, even then, that unless atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar was on his plane, nothing would ever come of any negotiations. Then and now, in DC and in Delhi, Kakodkar may not be in the photo-op, but he would clear every negotiating tactic and strategy.
So even as the Indo-US press sat inside the White House in July 2005, waiting for both leaders to emerge for the joint press conference, national security adviser M K Narayanan could be seen poring over the draft. Narayanan knew someone had to play the role of devil’s advocate, and that the role would naturally fall upon him. For the last two years, he has gone over every clause with a toothcomb.
And yet it was Narayanan, who, around the time PM’s special envoy Shyam Saran was eased out of the nuclear negotiations in March, really took over the deal. A former head of the Intelligence Bureau, with the confidence of both Sonia Gandhi and the PM, Narayanan realised he would have to tame the scientists. They were part of the sacred Indian inheritance and public opinion would not have tolerated the ``dirty politician’’ to denigrate their achievements.
So Kakodkar and Ravi Grover, his able colleague, were given a long rope to articulate their concerns. The dissent, however, could not be free-floating, it had to come with creative solutions. Secret negotiations in South Africa and London, over March and April, appeared to go some distance, but there was still no agreement over reprocessing fuel or India’s right to test a nuclear weapon. Narayanan decided to turn the pressure on the scientists.
To their credit, Kakodkar-Grover came up with a sizzler of an answer : India would propose an additional facility, open to international inspection, in which the spent fuel from the civilian reactors would be stored before it was reprocessed. The simplicity of the solution took your breath away. Point is, the option had always existed with the scientists. Narayanan seemed to have decided that Kakodkar & Co could not deny the UPA a place in history.
So when he spoke to his counterpart, Steve Hadley, about a week before they – and PM and Bush – met in Heilingendamm, on the margins of the G-8 in Germany – Narayanan made the safeguarded facility proposal. At Heilingendamm, Manmohan Singh told Bush, who had nearly been felled by a stomach viral, ``We will not be able to do this deal without reprocessing rights.’’
In Delhi, a couple of days before the PM travelled to Germany, Nicholas Burns, the top US diplomat, had kept dragging his feet over reprocessing rights. Until his meeting with Narayanan, who told him bluntly that his boss, namely Bush, had promised India the same during his visit to India in March last year.
George W. was at the heart of the deal, had always been since those long-ago days in July 2005. He would have to be spoken to, again – and again.
The job to do that fell upon India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen. At the best of times, Sen is known to be a man of few words, but if there was ever a workaholic, it is he. The details of Sen’s relationship with Bush are hardly known, but the truth is that he softened him up. He started by getting to know everything there was to know about the man the world so loved to hate. Such as the fact that he wakes up at the crack of dawn, and is an exercise fiend. ``Bush loves India,’’ was all Sen would ever cryptically say.
In March 2006, when India and the US failed to break their nightlong deadlock before talks the next morning, it was Bush who told Rice : I want a deal with India. Last month in Germany and last week in Washington, Bush had much the same message for Hadley.
By now, India’s Fab Four – Narayanan, Sen, Kakodkar and foreign secretary Shivshanker Menon – had probably forgotten they still had a pulse or a heartbeat left.
So when Hadley called Narayanan in his hotel in Washington last week and said, En route to your meeting with the Vice-President (Dick Cheney) could you drop by please, Narayanan arrived at 1.30 pm. The day before the two men had agreed to use the Kakodkar formula to resolve the reprocessing issue.
Today, Hadley offered a solution on fuel supply assurances : In the hypothetical future if India conducted a test, and US laws on all cessation of cooperation kicked in, the US would ensure that other countries like France and Russia helped India out with alternative supplies.
It was all over by lunch last Friday afternoon. Two years and two days, that’s how long it had taken Bush to get India out of the hole Madeleine Albright had put Delhi into.
ENDS
India's holy trinity defends nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 27, 2007 : India’s holy trinity – consisting of National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar and Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon – was unleashed on the media here today to defend India’s new nuclear status, even as a synchronised briefing by top US diplomat Nicholas Burns in Washington dealt with the US point of view on the deal.
But it was the clearly reluctant, albeit self-confessed ``karmayogi’’ Anil Kakodkar who was the focus of the hour. For the last two years, since the PM had first initiated the nuclear dialogue with Bush, Kakodkar had epitomised the so-called ``scientific’’ opposition to the deal.
Today, he had been put under the arclights, by none other than Narayanan, to defend it.
Asked if his scientists were now jubilant about India’s brand-new nuclear status, Kakodkar looked distinctly unhappy. Sitting as he was next to Narayanan, he could hardly break rank. So he chose the middle path.
``We’re all karmayogis. We will carry on our work…I could have had a huge wishlist. But we are consistent with what has been achieved,’’ Kakodkar said.
Earlier, he had been asked if he was happy with the outcome : ``Yes, I am happy,’’ said Kakodkar. ``I was very unhappy when I thought (some elements) won’t be there. (My criticisms) earlier were part of the national position. What I am saying now is also part of the national position. I have no reason to be unhappy,’’ he added.
Narayanan had, meanwhile, set the tone for the press conference, declaring that both countries had ``got a very good deal that would mutually benefit both countries,’’ but denied there were any ``extraneous’’ linkages, such as the purchase of 126 aircraft by India. He said the Opposition and the Left parties ``were more than satisfied’’ with the briefing they had received over the last couple of days.
Both Narayanan and Menon took cover behind the formality, that is the deal was about civil nuclear cooperation. Menon, in fact, rejected Pakistani criticism that the deal would upset the balance of power in the region, saying it had nothing to do with it.
Once again it was left to Kakodkar to admit that the agreement would ``allow India to carry on with its domestic three-stage nuclear programme and research & development,’’ which would remain independent.
He was virtually admitting that while the deal with the US would allow India’s 14 safeguarded ``civilian’’ reactors to receive fuel from the US and other countries, the US had also agreed that India would be able to keep its military programme going.
That is, if Delhi decided it wanted to continue making bombs, implied Kakodkar, it could. The civilian nuclear energy agreement with the US would not stand in its way.
But when a journalist from the London `Financial Times’ asked whether the deal, in fact, allowed India to leverage its military programme, even as its civilian programme carried on unabated with international help, Narayanan exhibited a flash of fury.
``I think its time that certain countries overcame the belief that we are interested in proliferation. If we need additional (fuel) for a stockpile, we know how to do it. We are not using this agreement as an excuse to enhance our strategic fuel capabilities,’’ he said.
Actually, it had been none other than Narayanan who had given proof of India being allowed to maintain the sanctity of its military programme : the fast-breeder programme, he said, would not be placed under any international obligations.
In the absence of the agreement text, which will also be simultaneously released only next week after the Bush administration clears it, Narayanan read out an agreed joint statement with the US. India, it said, ``was ready to work with like-minded countries to fashion a new consensus on non-proliferation and realise the goal of a nuclear weapon-free world.’’
Menon read out a joint statement by foreign ministers Pranab Mukherjee and Condoleezza Rice on ``next steps’’ : First, India would negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA as well as seek support for nuclear trade from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. Only after this would Bush put the agreement to his Congress for an either/or final vote.
Menon agreed that Mukherjee would now begin talking about the agreement with other countries and that the ARF summit would be a good way to start, especially as China, known to be a vehement critic of the deal, was also going to be present there.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 27, 2007 : India’s holy trinity – consisting of National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar and Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon – was unleashed on the media here today to defend India’s new nuclear status, even as a synchronised briefing by top US diplomat Nicholas Burns in Washington dealt with the US point of view on the deal.
But it was the clearly reluctant, albeit self-confessed ``karmayogi’’ Anil Kakodkar who was the focus of the hour. For the last two years, since the PM had first initiated the nuclear dialogue with Bush, Kakodkar had epitomised the so-called ``scientific’’ opposition to the deal.
Today, he had been put under the arclights, by none other than Narayanan, to defend it.
Asked if his scientists were now jubilant about India’s brand-new nuclear status, Kakodkar looked distinctly unhappy. Sitting as he was next to Narayanan, he could hardly break rank. So he chose the middle path.
``We’re all karmayogis. We will carry on our work…I could have had a huge wishlist. But we are consistent with what has been achieved,’’ Kakodkar said.
Earlier, he had been asked if he was happy with the outcome : ``Yes, I am happy,’’ said Kakodkar. ``I was very unhappy when I thought (some elements) won’t be there. (My criticisms) earlier were part of the national position. What I am saying now is also part of the national position. I have no reason to be unhappy,’’ he added.
Narayanan had, meanwhile, set the tone for the press conference, declaring that both countries had ``got a very good deal that would mutually benefit both countries,’’ but denied there were any ``extraneous’’ linkages, such as the purchase of 126 aircraft by India. He said the Opposition and the Left parties ``were more than satisfied’’ with the briefing they had received over the last couple of days.
Both Narayanan and Menon took cover behind the formality, that is the deal was about civil nuclear cooperation. Menon, in fact, rejected Pakistani criticism that the deal would upset the balance of power in the region, saying it had nothing to do with it.
Once again it was left to Kakodkar to admit that the agreement would ``allow India to carry on with its domestic three-stage nuclear programme and research & development,’’ which would remain independent.
He was virtually admitting that while the deal with the US would allow India’s 14 safeguarded ``civilian’’ reactors to receive fuel from the US and other countries, the US had also agreed that India would be able to keep its military programme going.
That is, if Delhi decided it wanted to continue making bombs, implied Kakodkar, it could. The civilian nuclear energy agreement with the US would not stand in its way.
But when a journalist from the London `Financial Times’ asked whether the deal, in fact, allowed India to leverage its military programme, even as its civilian programme carried on unabated with international help, Narayanan exhibited a flash of fury.
``I think its time that certain countries overcame the belief that we are interested in proliferation. If we need additional (fuel) for a stockpile, we know how to do it. We are not using this agreement as an excuse to enhance our strategic fuel capabilities,’’ he said.
Actually, it had been none other than Narayanan who had given proof of India being allowed to maintain the sanctity of its military programme : the fast-breeder programme, he said, would not be placed under any international obligations.
In the absence of the agreement text, which will also be simultaneously released only next week after the Bush administration clears it, Narayanan read out an agreed joint statement with the US. India, it said, ``was ready to work with like-minded countries to fashion a new consensus on non-proliferation and realise the goal of a nuclear weapon-free world.’’
Menon read out a joint statement by foreign ministers Pranab Mukherjee and Condoleezza Rice on ``next steps’’ : First, India would negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA as well as seek support for nuclear trade from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. Only after this would Bush put the agreement to his Congress for an either/or final vote.
Menon agreed that Mukherjee would now begin talking about the agreement with other countries and that the ARF summit would be a good way to start, especially as China, known to be a vehement critic of the deal, was also going to be present there.
ENDS
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