AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
WASHINGTON: Arms experts cautioned US lawmakers Tuesday against backing a civilian nuclear deal with India that they said violated a global atomic agreement and dampened efforts to reign in nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea.
“The main point is that our strategic interest dictates that we should not discard our nonproliferation policy and our Treaty obligations,” the experts said in a joint letter, citing the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“To do so would only enfeeble our case against NPT violators,” the 10 experts said, referring to Iran and North Korea.
By paving the way for the United States and other nuclear supplier states to provide nuclear fuel to India, the deal would free up the Asian giant's “limited domestic nuclear fuel making capacity to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons,” they said.
Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power reactors but can also be employed to manufacture the explosive core of atom bombs.
The NPT requires the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states, the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China, not to transfer nuclear weapons technology to any non-nuclear-weapon state.
India comes under this category as the treaty defines a non-nuclear weapons state as one which did not explode a nuclear device before 1967. India, a non-NPT member, launched its first nuclear test in 1974.
“It's hardly credible for the United States to demand that Iran give up its nuclear enrichment program when Iran hasn't made any bombs and shower India with nuclear fuel supply when it broke its pledge not to make bombs back in 1974,” Henry Sokolski, a former Pentagon non-proliferation official, told reporters.
“It isn't that we can't fix that by asking India to do more to limit its nuclear weapons efforts but we haven't,” said Sokolski, among those who penned the letter.
The United States has led a global push for NPT member Iran to suspend uranium enrichment to prove it does not seek atomic weapons.
Sokolski said that the United States and its allies did not take tough action when North Korea, which is currently threatening to test a long range missile, violated the NPT and withdrew from it in 2003.
Last year, the Stalinist regime declared itself a nuclear weapons state.
“North Korea clearly undermined the NPT and now we are giving all the benefits of NPT to a country that never followed the NPT rules. This is a double insult and slap in the face of nuclear restraint,” Sokolski said.
Other signatories of the letter included ex-US nuclear regulatory commissioner Victor Gilinsky, ex-director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency John Holum, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council Henry Rowen and US Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball.
The letter to Congress came ahead of meetings next week by the foreign relations committees of the House of Representatives and Senate that would decide whether to endorse the nuclear deal clinched by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March.
The panels' findings on the deal, which requires mandatory backing from legislators, would then be submitted to the full Houses for consideration.
The Bush administration wants to secure passage of the deal before the November mid-term Congressional elections but it apparently lacks wide and bipartisan backing.
The Congress has to amend the US Atomic Energy Act, which currently prohibits nuclear sales to non NPT signatories.
Some legislators want to first study a set of international safeguards under which India and the United States would implement the deal. The safeguards are still being drafted by the two governments.
“I do have serious concerns about the deal negotiated by the administration,” Democratic lawmaker Howard Berman told reporters Tuesday.
He has proposed a bill that instead of authorizing a specific exception in US law for India, would set conditions to be met by non-NPT members before gaining access to US nuclear technology.
He supported a halt in Indian production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and a guarantee that Congress could amend any final bilateral nuclear agreement.
Berman also wanted the safeguards to be consistent with standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) practices and a provision to terminate the pact if India tested nuclear weapons or violated the safeguards.
