United Press International,
WASHINGTON, DC, United States: Non-proliferation experts have blasted the Bush administration for negotiating too lenient nuclear and space cooperation deals with India.
The agreements announced at a summit meeting between President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18 'if not properly clarified by Congress, are fraught with danger,' Henry Sokolski, executive director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington told the House International Relations Committee in testimony Oct. 26.
'Congress should delay endorsing such cooperation,' Sokolski said, until India forswears 'increasing the net number of nuclear weapons it currently possesses.'
Congress should also apply the principle of applying to India the stringent requirements of identifying 'all reactors supplying electricity to its distribution grid, all research reactors claimed to be for peaceful purposes, all spent fuel these reactors have produced' and subjecting them 'to routine compulsory International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, he said.
'To be sure, insisting on these requirements will initially displease those in a hurry to seal the nuclear and space deals with India,' he said. However, Sokolski said, these requirements 'must be met, if, as the deal`s backers have claimed repeatedly, the nuclear and space deals are to enhance the cause of global non-proliferation and security. '
'The U.S., after all, has an interest in making India behave as the U.K. (Britain) and Japan does, not merely as China or Iran,' he said.
Sokolski also noted that while supporters of the boosted U.S.-India cooperation on space and nuclear energy see India as a counterweight to Iran and China on Asia as a staunch U.S. ally, 'India`s foreign secretary and prime minister are Insistent India`s July 18 understandings with the U.S. are not directed against any third country.'
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