01-26-2006, 04:51 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>On R-Day eve, US arm-twists India </b>
Pioneer.com
Kanchan Gupta/ New Delhi
In a gross display of insensitivity towards India and Indians on the eve of his host country's national day celebrations, US Ambassador David C Mulford has tried to arm-twist the UPA Government into toeing the US line on Iran, saying unless New Delhi does so, it could kiss away the Indo-US nuclear deal. Â Â
That the Bush Administration expects a quid pro quo to take last year's July 18 agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation forward was made clear by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns during his recent visit to New Delhi for talks with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. But Mr Burns was careful, at least in public, about his choice of words.
This is not the first time that Mr Mulford, known to be a personal friend of President George W Bush, has been less than diplomatic: In the past, speaking from public fora, he has adopted a bullying tone while castigating India's economic policies and its decision to align with Germany in the Group of Four (G-4) that sought the UN Security Council's enlargement.
As a veteran diplomat pointed out, "This Ambassador doesn't shy away from making public threats against his host country. In that sense, he is ready, as his record shows, to push the envelope even when such effort breaches diplomatic norms."
By explicitly stating in his interview to PTI that if India wants progress on the nuclear deal it must toe the American line on Iran's nuclear programme, Mr Mulford has made public what the Prime Minister and the UPA Government have repeatedly sought to deny: That the US has deftly turned the nuclear agreement into a tool to coercively shape India's foreign policy.
For the moment, the US has set voting against Iran as the litmus test for India. In a sense, India's vote against Iran last October at the International Atomic Energy Agency whetted American appetite to bring Indian foreign policy in line with Washington's worldview.
<b>If the US is able to force India to cast a second vote against Iran in early February, then more such litmus tests are bound to follow, and India will have to pay the heavy political cost of the deal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed without factoring in the possibility of American duplicity.</b>
The political backlash to such capitulation - the Left will claim that its stand has been vindicated - could virtually force the Government's hands. In a late evening reaction to Mr Mulford's comments, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman said, "The position that India will take on this issue (of Iran) at the IAEA will be based on India's own independent judgement. We categorically reject any attempt to link this to the proposed Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear energy cooperation."
As a result of Mr Mulford's damaging comments, the Indo-US nuclear deal could now founder on the rock of American obduracy and the UPA Government's inability to stand up. In effect, he would have helped kill a deal that both the Bush Administration and the UPA regime have been touting as "historic". Curiously, apart from ignoring the need for a senior diplomat to be circumspect, Mr Mulford has also been extremely presumptuous in claiming that "the (US) Congress will simply stop considering the matter..." The US Senate and the House of Representatives are elected bodies on behalf of whose members Mr Mulford, appointed by the executive, cannot presume to speak.
Nor is Mr Mulford entirely correct when he claims that "the initiative will die in the Congress". There is no initiative at the moment. Although the nuclear deal was supposed to be implemented in a reciprocal manner - as per the commitment given by the Prime Minister in Parliament - and despite India taking several steps to concretise its civil-military separation plan, the Bush Administration is yet to present any plan of action to the Congress. Similarly, Mr Mulford has clearly overstepped his representative powers by speaking on behalf of the member countries of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group. Interestingly, the US is yet to present any plan of action to the NSG.
<b>The American Ambassador says that India's civil-military segregation plan for nuclear facilities has not met the US "test of credibility".</b> The deal that was inked in Washington last July does not appoint the US as the arbiter. Nowhere does the agreement state that India should submit its separation plan to the US for approval. If the UPA Government has submitted the separation details for American scrutiny - as it has, and the Prime Minister's National Security Adviser has gone on TV to promise further adjustments to please the US - it has done so on its own, gratuitously.
Mr Mulford has chosen to ignore that it is not India, but the US that has played the role of the obstructionist on the nuclear deal. The US began moving the goalposts no sooner than the accord had been signed. Although the accord spelled out India's obligations as being reciprocal, Mr Burns declared on July 19, 2005, that the agreement "will have to be implemented by the Indian Government and then we will have to seek these changes from the Congress."
While the accord merely states that India will begin "identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes in a phased manner," Washington has unilaterally added a specific conditionality -- that such a separation plan be "credible," "transparent" and "defensible." In other words, the US has appropriated for itself the role of judge, prosecutor and jury. The US has also supplanted the nuclear deal's central plank - that India would "assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the United States."
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert G Joseph said "voluntary offer" safeguards of the kind the US has with the IAEA would not be acceptable for India. Mr Joseph has also stipulated another condition not applicable to the other nuclear powers: Safeguards on Indian facilities, he said, "must be applied in perpetuity."
<b>The naïveté of the UPA Government is evident from the following claim it posted on the PMO website after the deal was signed last July: India "has committed [itself] to taking reciprocally exactly the same steps that the other nuclear weapon states have taken... An argument has been made that separation into civilian and military programmes will rob India of flexibility if that is required by unanticipated circumstances. Nuclear-weapons states, including the US, have the right to shift facilities from civilian category to military and there is no reason why this should not apply to India." </b> <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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Couple of reason for this statement.
1) Iran vote in Feb
2) Weak Central Govt. Slight external work or any Iraq type scandal can sink UPA boat.
Pioneer.com
Kanchan Gupta/ New Delhi
In a gross display of insensitivity towards India and Indians on the eve of his host country's national day celebrations, US Ambassador David C Mulford has tried to arm-twist the UPA Government into toeing the US line on Iran, saying unless New Delhi does so, it could kiss away the Indo-US nuclear deal. Â Â
That the Bush Administration expects a quid pro quo to take last year's July 18 agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation forward was made clear by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns during his recent visit to New Delhi for talks with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. But Mr Burns was careful, at least in public, about his choice of words.
This is not the first time that Mr Mulford, known to be a personal friend of President George W Bush, has been less than diplomatic: In the past, speaking from public fora, he has adopted a bullying tone while castigating India's economic policies and its decision to align with Germany in the Group of Four (G-4) that sought the UN Security Council's enlargement.
As a veteran diplomat pointed out, "This Ambassador doesn't shy away from making public threats against his host country. In that sense, he is ready, as his record shows, to push the envelope even when such effort breaches diplomatic norms."
By explicitly stating in his interview to PTI that if India wants progress on the nuclear deal it must toe the American line on Iran's nuclear programme, Mr Mulford has made public what the Prime Minister and the UPA Government have repeatedly sought to deny: That the US has deftly turned the nuclear agreement into a tool to coercively shape India's foreign policy.
For the moment, the US has set voting against Iran as the litmus test for India. In a sense, India's vote against Iran last October at the International Atomic Energy Agency whetted American appetite to bring Indian foreign policy in line with Washington's worldview.
<b>If the US is able to force India to cast a second vote against Iran in early February, then more such litmus tests are bound to follow, and India will have to pay the heavy political cost of the deal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed without factoring in the possibility of American duplicity.</b>
The political backlash to such capitulation - the Left will claim that its stand has been vindicated - could virtually force the Government's hands. In a late evening reaction to Mr Mulford's comments, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman said, "The position that India will take on this issue (of Iran) at the IAEA will be based on India's own independent judgement. We categorically reject any attempt to link this to the proposed Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear energy cooperation."
As a result of Mr Mulford's damaging comments, the Indo-US nuclear deal could now founder on the rock of American obduracy and the UPA Government's inability to stand up. In effect, he would have helped kill a deal that both the Bush Administration and the UPA regime have been touting as "historic". Curiously, apart from ignoring the need for a senior diplomat to be circumspect, Mr Mulford has also been extremely presumptuous in claiming that "the (US) Congress will simply stop considering the matter..." The US Senate and the House of Representatives are elected bodies on behalf of whose members Mr Mulford, appointed by the executive, cannot presume to speak.
Nor is Mr Mulford entirely correct when he claims that "the initiative will die in the Congress". There is no initiative at the moment. Although the nuclear deal was supposed to be implemented in a reciprocal manner - as per the commitment given by the Prime Minister in Parliament - and despite India taking several steps to concretise its civil-military separation plan, the Bush Administration is yet to present any plan of action to the Congress. Similarly, Mr Mulford has clearly overstepped his representative powers by speaking on behalf of the member countries of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group. Interestingly, the US is yet to present any plan of action to the NSG.
<b>The American Ambassador says that India's civil-military segregation plan for nuclear facilities has not met the US "test of credibility".</b> The deal that was inked in Washington last July does not appoint the US as the arbiter. Nowhere does the agreement state that India should submit its separation plan to the US for approval. If the UPA Government has submitted the separation details for American scrutiny - as it has, and the Prime Minister's National Security Adviser has gone on TV to promise further adjustments to please the US - it has done so on its own, gratuitously.
Mr Mulford has chosen to ignore that it is not India, but the US that has played the role of the obstructionist on the nuclear deal. The US began moving the goalposts no sooner than the accord had been signed. Although the accord spelled out India's obligations as being reciprocal, Mr Burns declared on July 19, 2005, that the agreement "will have to be implemented by the Indian Government and then we will have to seek these changes from the Congress."
While the accord merely states that India will begin "identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes in a phased manner," Washington has unilaterally added a specific conditionality -- that such a separation plan be "credible," "transparent" and "defensible." In other words, the US has appropriated for itself the role of judge, prosecutor and jury. The US has also supplanted the nuclear deal's central plank - that India would "assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the United States."
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert G Joseph said "voluntary offer" safeguards of the kind the US has with the IAEA would not be acceptable for India. Mr Joseph has also stipulated another condition not applicable to the other nuclear powers: Safeguards on Indian facilities, he said, "must be applied in perpetuity."
<b>The naïveté of the UPA Government is evident from the following claim it posted on the PMO website after the deal was signed last July: India "has committed [itself] to taking reciprocally exactly the same steps that the other nuclear weapon states have taken... An argument has been made that separation into civilian and military programmes will rob India of flexibility if that is required by unanticipated circumstances. Nuclear-weapons states, including the US, have the right to shift facilities from civilian category to military and there is no reason why this should not apply to India." </b> <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Couple of reason for this statement.
1) Iran vote in Feb
2) Weak Central Govt. Slight external work or any Iraq type scandal can sink UPA boat.