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
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
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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