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Skeptics in India have continued to express fears that a landmark Indo-US civilian nuclear deal passed Saturday by the US Congress will hobble India's strategic military programme.
The law, expected to be signed by US President George W. Bush Monday, allows the export of nuclear fuel and technology to India for the first time in the more than 30 years since the Asian country first tested a nuclear device.
But Indian critics of the agreement insist that several clauses of the legislation, which reconciled versions of the law approved by the US House of Representatives and Senate, remained too intrusive.
The Asian Age daily commented that the “final nuclear bill not only scoffs at Indian concerns but also infuses more sting”, and highlighted the lack of a guarantee of a fuel supply over the lifespan of imported reactors as a key problem.
Under the deal announced by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush in July 2005, India, a non-signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), agreed to place its civilian-use reactors under global scrutiny.
The agreement includes a set of international safeguards to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, and to which India must adhere.
But the Asian Age said that the final text appeared to require monitoring above and beyond that, pointing to a clause asking for annual estimates on how much uranium India has “mined and milled.”
In a watered-down version of an earlier amendment, the law also asks for India's participation in US efforts to “dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran.”
“This clause has been incorporated as a reporting requirement and will still figure as a perpetual point of pressure,” political analyst Siddharth Varadarajan wrote in the left-leaning Hindu newspaper.
Although India has sided with the United States in pressuring Iran at the IAEA, the energy-hungry Asian giant is also still eyeing up Iran's huge gas reserves.
A section of the bill that calls for setting up a joint scientific program to develop non-proliferation safeguards has also been viewed with alarm by Indian scientists.
“The presence of Section 109 alone must be considered an absolute deal breaker,” said Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, the former head of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, in a report published in The Telegraph.
Gopalakrishnan had said earlier that such a program could allow for the possibility of gathering information on India's nuclear weapons activity.
But one analyst said that many of the clauses raising hackles were contained in a section of the bill that is considered nonbinding.
The United States and India still have to frame a comprehensive agreement finalising all technical elements of the deal and it has to be passed by the US Congress again.
The deal also still requires the endorsement of the influential 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
“It's neither a case for euphoria nor for a panic situation. There is cause for satisfaction,” said C. Uday Bhaskar, a defence analyst with the government-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.
“Now we have to go to the next step and work out the fine print of the 123 (technical agreement) because India's commitment actually starts from there, not from this bill.”
Bhaskar added India's strategic goals now depend not on the accumulation of large numbers of nuclear weapons — the thinking behind the fears that are driving opposition to the deal — but access to energy.
“The twentieth century was all about nuclear weapons. The 21st century is not,” said Bhaskar.
“India's ultimate strategic interest is not really the accretion of more nuclear weapons. Cracking the energy problem is more urgent for India at this stage.”
