AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
US weapons experts are calling on the US Senate to tighten provisions of a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India despite warnings by New Delhi that it cannot accept any more restrictions.
The experts want legislation to have an up-front declaration that India has stopped production of fissile material — plutonium and highly enriched uranium — for nuclear weapons and an annual certification that the deal does not fuel New Delhi's nuclear weapons program.
They also want measures prohibiting the United States from providing nuclear aid directly or through other suppliers to India if it breaks commitments made under a July 18, 2005 accord reached between US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Singh has made clear that India would not accept any conditions that went beyond the agreement with Bush and a plan they endorsed in which New Delhi would have 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors placed under international safeguards.
India particularly does not want to accept any US moratorium on the production of fissile material.
But the US weapons experts said the measures were necessary because India had not joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a global accord to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.
“In our view, these are responsible actions and steps the (US) Congress should take to ensure that the deal does not create what we would consider to be adverse and damaging proliferation problems,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told AFP.
Kimball was among 17 experts who sent a joint letter to Senate Tuesday with a set of recommendations ahead of a likely vote by the chamber on the nuclear deal this fall.
Under the deal, Washington will aid development of civil nuclear power programs in India in return for New Delhi placing its atomic facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards
India tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 and is currently banned by the United States and other mostly industrialized nations from buying fuel for atomic reactors and other related equipment as a result.
In July, the US House of Representatives adopted the deal only after ensuring that even after it is passed by the Senate and becomes law, the nuclear cooperation agreement would come under full oversight authority by Congress.
The House had demanded periodic reporting from President Bush on Indias compliance with key US objectives in the region as well as on issues of non-proliferation.
Bill Frist, the Republican leader in the Senate, is consulting with colleagues on when and how best to bring the legislation to the floor for debate and vote, his office said.
“It is something that he wants to get done this month,” Carolyn Weyforth, spokeswoman for Frist, told AFP. Congress will have to adjourn by October 6 ahead of key mid-term elections.
Despite Indian criticisms, excessive tinkering of the legislation at this stage carries the risk that the carefully crafted bill will lose the strong US bipartisan support it now enjoys, said Lisa Curtis of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
A former staff member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Curtis said tensions between the Bush Administration and Congress had been palpable since the deal was first announced more than a year ago.
The deal also could face possible delay in the Senate over the inclusion to the legislation of a plan for IAEA inspections on US nuclear facilities.
It was included in part to show good faith on the part of the United States as India had to subsequently adhere to IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities, Curtis said.
Some senators are wary about the plan for “national security reasons” even though the United States, a recognized weapons state, does not require its nuclear facilities used for national security purposes to be subject to IAEA inspections, she said.
