The Hindu : Front Page : Last-minute bid to stall India-U.S. nuclear agreement

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2006

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Last-minute bid to stall India-U.S. nuclear agreement

"State Department is delaying a report to clear the deal"

WASHINGTON: As the House of Representatives prepares for a vote on the India-U.S. civilian nuclear technology deal on Wednesday, critics are making last-minute efforts to scuttle the accord, which they say would make a mockery of the U.S. non-proliferation goals of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Lawmakers led by Ed Markey shot a letter on Monday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding that the State Department submit a required semi-annual report that details the activities of foreigners deemed to have dealt with Iran or Syria in nuclear trade. They suggested the department was delaying the report till the India deal is cleared by Congress. Past reports, they noted, have accused India of proliferation.

A staunch critic of the deal, Mr. Markey, a Republican, who is also Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Taskforce on Non-proliferation, has demanded that the Bush administration immediately release an ``overdue report'' naming all foreign persons who had engaged in the spread of weapons of mass destruction and proliferation related activities.

In the letter to Ms. Rice, he said, ``It would be absolutely unacceptable if the State Department purposefully withheld information relating to Indian entities engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction until after the Congress considers the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement.''

He was joined by Republicans Ellen Tauscher of the Armed Services Committee and Barbara Lee of the International Relations Committee.

Previous sanction

"The Bush Administration has previously sanctioned some Indian firms and individuals for, among other things, shipping biological toxins to North Korea and shipping chemical weapons ingredients to Iran. No new nuclear deal with India should be signed until we can prove that these activities have stopped,'' Mr. Markey said.

"Halt production"

A non-proliferation lobby, headed by the Arms Control Association (ACA), said in a letter that India should halt production of the key ingredients for making nuclear weapons before the civilian nuclear deal is approved.

It said, "The Indo-U.S. deal is not an effective way to restructure the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty system and would lead to the further unravelling of the basic security bargain established between the nuclear haves and have-nots."

The ACA, which has been a staunch critic of the deal, believes it would compromise U.S. goals on non-proliferation.

The letter, signed by a dozen nuclear experts, criticises International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei for supporting what it called a "controversial U.S. initiative to expand civil nuclear trade with India."

The deal would provide India trade benefits reserved for countries that had forsworn nuclear weapons or those legally bound to give them up, neither of which was true of India. "India is moving in the opposite direction," the experts said. — UNI

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