The Heart Of The Matter

July seems to be aparticularly significant month for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh--in July 1991,as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government, he announced theliberalization of industry from government controls in his budget speech,starting the move towards the opening up of the Indian economy. In July 2005, ina Joint Statement with President Bush, he initiated a process aimed at removingthree decades of technology denial to India by most of the countries withadvanced technology.   Theprocess was centred on an agreement with the US, the progenitor of the denialregimes, in civilian nuclear energy. And then, last week, after a rocky and strenuous twoyears of negotiations, the government of India approved such an agreement. 

Whilethe text is not yet publicly available, it is clear that, in spite of fears anddire prognostications, India’s negotiators have been able to project andprotect India’s interests, in both the civilian and strategic fields. It istrue that, as in the case of his economic reforms, Prime Minister Manmohan Singhis not solely responsible for this achievement; he built on a basis establishedby his predecessors and has been assisted be an outstanding team of negotiators.

To briefly put the agreement--called the ‘123’agreement as it is under that section of the US Atomic Energy Act that the USsigns such cooperation agreements with other countries--into a context, it isnecessary to recall that India started her nuclear energy programme withinternational cooperation, including with the US, and in fact signed on to aPartial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. However, when the US and the USSR pushedthrough a discriminatory Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970, after Chinahad conducted her first nuclear test in 1964, India refused to join. In 1971,the nuclear armed USS Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal to put pressureon an India that was winning the Bangladesh war, India tested a nuclear device,in 1974. Enraged, the US not only passed domestic laws to curtail the flow ofall dual use technology to India, but by 1975, had established the NuclearSuppliers Group to ensure that the technology denial regime was broad based. Thenuclear issue became, and remained, for the next thirty years, a major obstaclein normal India-US relations. 

In 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests anddeclared herself a nuclear weapon state . After an initial period of outrage,the US government, under President Clinton, a Democrat, appeared to move towardsan engagement with India, recognizing that India’s security interests had tobe taken into account, even while pushing for a global non-proliferation regimewith progressively stricter controls on the export of dual use items andtechnologies to India. The objective of that government was to discuss civiliannuclear cooperation with India, even while attempting to ‘cap, roll back andeliminate’ India’s weapons programme. Clearly, this approach did not lead toany significant improvement in relations.

In the meanwhile, India’s economy had started to grow andthe world itself had started to change. The Bush Administration, a Republicanone, realized that it had much to gain if it could forge a new and friendlyrelationship with India, and for that, the nuclear ‘issue’ had to beresolved. To accomplish this, the US had to change its domestic law to favouronly one country, India. For India, an opportunity presented itself to unshacklethe nuclear energy sector, and to benefit from free flows of high technology toenable her to build a competitive knowledge based economy, without compromisingher security interests or her technological independence.

India offered to separate her civilian and militaryfacilities and place the former under IAEA safeguards; in return the USproceeded to change its laws to ‘exceptionalise’ India. The Hyde Act,finally passed by the US Congress, did ‘exceptionalise’ India, but it alsointroduced a series of conditions which made the Act as much a non-proliferationact as a cooperation one. This was a reflection of an entrenched distrust ofIndia in parts of the US establishment, with memories of not only India’s ownhostility to the US during the Cold War, but the indignation at India’snuclear weapons tests, still alive. It was this mind set ( with an almost mirrorimage in India) that the negotiators of the Agreement had to contend with. Ithas been held that the US Congress, in permitting civilian nuclear cooperationwith India, has only reiterated those sections of US law that were not amended;however, the inclusion of sections of a US non-proliferation law that hadgeneric reference were made specific to India.

This would have been the biggest hurdle before thenegotiators, one that was handled by the US side as the law applied to them andcould not bind India. Clearly, this obstacle was overcome by intervention at thepolitical level which had determined that friendly relations with India requiredflexibility and sensitivity to India’s concerns. There are already reports ofa negative reaction in the US, with some US Congressmen taking strong exceptionto the ‘concessions’ made by the US to India in the Agreement.

However, India had specific concerns, too. India’snuclear programme depends on reprocessing spent fuel; the US, in its other 123agreements gives such rights (when using US fuel or materiel) only tosafeguarded facilities. India, which had not, in its separation plan, providedfor any reprocessing plants to be placed under safeguards, offered, as acompromise to build a special reprocessing plant for US fuel which it wouldplace under safeguards. In any case, US law does not bar reprocessing rights.Secondly, India had, in March 2006, agreed to place each civilian facility undersafeguards for the lifetime of the facility, provided such facility was assuredfuel in perpetuity. This was a major issue, as India still had bitter memoriesof Tarapur. According to US law, if a non-nuclear weapon state tested a nuclearweapon all cooperation would cease, and all materiel or fuel imported from theUS would have to be returned. This would have implied that either India’sinvestments or her freedom to test in the future, should she require to do so,would be jeopardized. Obviously, while politically the US accepted India’spossession of nuclear weapons, no amendment had been introduced to the legalprovisions. A third area of difficulty related to the transfer of enrichment andreprocessing technologies; while India does not need such technologies, havingdeveloped her own, she could not accept any discrimination in treatment, whichmight impact on some components she may require in the future. According to thePrime Minister and the External Affairs Minister, all India’s concerns havebeen "satisfactorily" met in the Agreement.

Of course, there are still further steps to be taken andobstacles to be overcome. The Nuclear Suppliers Group has to be persuaded tomake the same exception for India--will China agree, without some provisionfor Pakistan? India has to negotiate a sui generis India-specific safeguardsagreement with the IAEA for her civilian reactors, the US Congress has toapprove the whole deal after it is completed, not necessarily a foregoneconclusion. In India, opposition Parties, particularly the Left front have toconcur-an uncertain eventuality.

 To try andchange mindsets, to overcome decades of estrangement, distrust and adversarialrelations, through  a singleAgreement, however significant, is a giant task Whatever the strategic purposes of the US, a friendlier and closerrelationship is probably reflective of the goals of India’s new generation fortechnological freedom.. It is the heart of the matter.

Arundhati Ghose was India's permanent representative/ ambassador to the United Nations. In 1996, she dramatically vetoed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the Conference on Disarmament, a step that some say would not have been taken without her. This piece was originally written for Outlook Saptahik