Civilian Nuclear Cooperation

In a speech before India’s parliament on August 17, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it all too clear that India was not yet ready to accept America’s liberality. U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation, he argued, was about getting rid of technology controls, rather than–as White House officials had been insisting–a way to strengthen nonproliferation. “The central imperative in our discussions with the United States,” Singh said, “is to ensure the complete and irreversible removal of existing restrictions imposed on India through iniquitous restrictive trading regimes over the years.”

What did he mean by “iniquitous restrictive trading regimes”? The short answer is all the strategic technology restraints the U.S. government has helped establish and still holds dear. These include export and end-use controls for sensitive high-technology transfers, the Wassenaar Arrangement to control militarily useful technologies and goods, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safeguards system, the Australia Agreement on chemical and biological weapons-related commerce, and President Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to interdict illicit international trade in strategic weapons-related goods.

Never mind that Congress has made no binding requirements on India in its enabling legislation for nuclear cooperation. Congress asked only that the State Department and the president report on India’s willingness to adhere to its nonproliferation commitments and spelled out what U.S. policy should be regarding these restrictions. Still, Singh objects that even alluding to such external controls as the PSI, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and the Australia Group is an insult to India’s sovereignty.

WITH REGARD TO President Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative–which aims to get nations to enforce their own laws to stem illicit international weapons-related trade and which Secretary Rice hoped India would cooperate in–Singh was dismissively curt. This is “an extraneous issue,” he said, that “we cannot accept.” Singh also rejected the idea that Congress should receive any reports certifying India’s compliance with its nonproliferation commitments. “We have made it clear to the United States our opposition to these provisions, even if they are projected as nonbinding on India,” because “this would introduce an element of uncertainty regarding future cooperation and”–again–“is not acceptable to us.”

Reporting requirements, it should be noted, are normally what Congress lays down when it is confused by complex issues and does not want to address them. How, then, might requiring State and the president to report on India’s nonproliferation compliance “introduce an element of uncertainty”? Simple: An honest report right now would prove embarrassing. Over the last 20 months, the State Department has sanctioned no fewer than seven separate Indian entities for transferring strategic weapons-related technology or goods to Iran.

One of these entities–Balaji Amines Limited–was sanctioned late in July for selling Iran chemicals critical to manufacturing rocket fuel at the very same time Iranian-supplied missiles to Hezbollah were slamming into the homes of innocents in Haifa. State also sanctioned Y.S.R. Prasad, former chairman of India’s entire state-run civilian nuclear program. He is reported to have visited with Iran’s nuclear establishment several times and transferred technology to extract tritium, a material necessary to make smaller, more efficient missile-deliverable nuclear warheads. India is demanding that the United States drop its sanctions against Prasad, who is one of the most honored members of India’s nuclear elite. He also is one of the eight leading Indian nuclear scientists who recently wrote Singh protesting the nuclear deal’s encroachment on India’s freedom to expand its nuclear arsenal and to conduct a foreign policy independent of Washington.

A key concern he and his distinguished colleagues raised in their letter (which Singh noted in his address) relates to the strategic cooperation agreement India reached with Iran in 2003. The House of Representatives has been worried about India’s ties to Iran and considered conditioning U.S. nuclear cooperation on India’s supporting allied efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program. This, however, would be a deal breaker for India, Bush administration officials warned. The House listened, backed down, and instead simply expressed its desire for Indian support against Iran’s nuclear program in the report that accompanied its enabling legislation. For India, though, this was still intolerable. “We cannot accept introduction of extraneous issues on foreign policy,” Singh explained. “Any prescriptive suggestions in this regard are not acceptable to us.”

Keep in mind one of the key reasons why the administration offered India nuclear cooperation, besides “strengthening nonproliferation” and “bringing India into the nonproliferation mainstream,” was to help cement America’s “strategic partnership” with India. Besides the activities of the sanctioned entities, India also is helping Iran complete a major new naval facility with direct access to the Indian Ocean and has been conducting joint exercises with the Iranian navy (two inconvenient facts that State Department officials have tried every which way to deny). Then there is the recent report in the Economist of the Indians supporting Pakistani rebels in Baluchistan, a Pakistani province bordering Iran. Clearly, Iran is not an “extraneous issue” for India, which, in turn, may be why Indian officials are not eager to see any Congressional “references” to it.

Yet another area Singh warned Congress to avoid trying to firewall is U.S. nuclear assistance helping India’s military nuclear program. Most of the key nuclear restraints in U.S. law, as well as the creation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, were actually prompted by India’s use of “peaceful” foreign civilian assistance to make bombs, starting with its 1974 nuclear weapons test. It was these restrictions that the White House and Congress chose to override.

For the sake of nonproliferation, however, that administration and Congress retained existing U.S. legal requirements that would suspend nuclear cooperation if India resumes nuclear testing and a ban on exports of enrichment or reprocessing technology or hardware (unless it was part of an international effort to reduce the proliferation risk these activities posed). They also made clear that no U.S. nuclear aid should be used even indirectly to help India’s weapons program and that whatever civilian nuclear facilities India did choose to place under IAEA safeguards would have to remain safeguarded in perpetuity.

Singh’s message to America on these points was clear: No deal. Any U.S. effort to penalize India for exercising its sovereign right to resume nuclear testing was simply “not acceptable” to India. Nor was there any question in his mind of Indian nuclear plants receiving international inspections unless they enjoyed an “uninterrupted supply” of foreign nuclear fuel. If supplies were suspended (as U.S. law currently requires, when a recipient tests a nuclear weapon), Singh made it clear that India would respond with appropriate “corrective action” (e.g., terminating inspection of their nuclear plants).

As for any restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing, Singh was just as emphatic: “We will not agree to any dilution that would prevent us from securing the benefits of full civil nuclear cooperation.” No additional Indian nuclear plants would be opened to inspections, he insisted, until “all nuclear restrictions have been lifted on India.”

Prime Minister Singh knows that India cannot formally be treated as if it had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty–i.e., like the United States, Russia, France, China, and the United Kingdom–because India never agreed to sign the treaty. As a result, India must open its nuclear facilities to much more international inspection than the five declared nuclear weapons states that originally signed. Yet, in his address Singh argues that India and India alone should determine when and how it should be inspected, i.e., as if India was one of the original NPT weapons state signatories. This is what he and other Indian officials mean when they speak about the need for “India specific safeguards.” These are nothing less than a tipping of the nuclear rules meant to render them all but worthless in India’s case. With this, India will establish a precedent that other non-weapons countries are certain to demand be applied to their cases as well.

WHAT THEN SHOULD WE MAKE OF ALL THIS? At the very start of his speech, Singh emphasized that India would never “compromise the independent nature of our foreign policy.” As proof, he cited his open criticism of President Bush’s decision to intervene in Iraq as “a mistake.” “India,” he said “does not find favor with regime change.”

Yet, in his critique of the Senate and House provisions Singh is asking for no less of a “regime change” to benefit India–an overthrow of the last 30 years of nuclear nonproliferation rules. On this score, Congress should be at least as critical of New Delhi as Singh is of President Bush about Iraq. Certainly, trimming our legislative sails for India any more than we already have or curtailing debate over possible amendments to clarify the nuclear deal would be a major mistake.

Henry Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, DC and is editor of Taming the Next Set of Strategic Weapons Threats (Strategic Studies Institute, 2006).