AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
WASHINGTON: Senators criticised the US administration Wednesday for not being transparent with lawmakers on a controversial civilian nuclear deal with India.
Legislators were particularly interested in an agreement being negotiated with New Delhi detailing the landmark deal clinched on March 2 by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The deal would allow India, which is not a signatory of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing a majority of its atomic reactors under international safeguards.
Speaking at a hearing on the deal, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden charged that the administration had “reneged” on a promise to share drafts of the bilateral nuclear agreement.
The United States had sought a provision in the agreement that nuclear cooperation would be discontinued if India conducts a nuclear test, but New Delhi has flatly rejected the suggestion, officials have said.
Biden said the administration also had yet to answer a deluge of questions posed by lawmakers, or share with them the full list of India's civil nuclear facilities — “even in classified form”.
He wanted the administration's “negotiating record” on the question of international safeguards that Indian nuclear reactors would be subject to.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN global nuclear watchdog, is still negotiating with India on the safeguards.
“All parties involved in the negotiations, including the Bush administration, should facilitate the maximum amount of transparency possible, so that Congress is better equipped to make informed judgments,” said Republican Senator Dick Lugar, who heads the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee which held a hearing Wednesday.
Lugar said he had himself submitted to the administration 90 questions — aside from 82 questions that have already been answered — following extensive April 5 congressional testimony on the deal by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“We appreciate the administration's attention to these questions as the committee carefully works through the intricacies of the nuclear agreement,” he said.
For it to be effective, the nuclear agreement has to be approved by Congress.
Until the administration answers lawmakers' questions and provides them details on the deal, “we simply should not act on its proposed legislation,” Biden said.
Several American weapons experts have warned that forging a civilian nuclear agreement with non-NPT member India would not only make it harder to enforce rules against nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea, but also set a dangerous precedent to other countries with nuclear ambitions.
“If we do this deal, ask how we will avoid offering a similar one to Brazil or Argentina if they decide on nuclear weapons acquisition, or our treaty ally South Korea,” Robert Gallucci of Georgetown University told the hearing.
“The deal would set a dangerous precedent,” he said. “If we do this, we will put at risk a world of a very few nuclear weapons states, and open the door to the true proliferation of nuclear weapons in the years ahead,” he said.
The Bush administration says the deal offers a crucial energy alternative to rapidly-growing India and would elevate relations between the world's largest and oldest democracies to a new strategic height.
Ashley Tellis from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank, said a strong American partnership with India was essential if the United States wanted a “stable geopolitical order in Asia”.
He said the partnership “represents a considered effort at 'shaping' the
emerging Asian environment to suit American interests in the 21st century”.
