Nuclear Thread - 3

[acharya]

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BJP: it’s a mockery of Manmohan’s assurances</b>[B]
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/15/stories/...771000.htm
Neena Vyas
Safeguards accord doesn’t recognise India as weapons state
Yashwant Sinha
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday said the draft safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency “has made a mockery of the assurances that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly given to the nation [in Parliament].”

BJP leaders Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, in a joint statement at a press conference here, said Dr. Singh assured the Lok Sabha on July 29, 2005 that India would undertake “the same responsibilities and obligations as … the United States.” But the proposed agreement flouted this, not recognising India as a nuclear weapons state on a par with the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China.

Though the Prime Minister had assured the House that it would be an “India-specific” agreement — less intrusive and less onerous than agreements with non-nuclear weapons states — the draft “resembled” agreements with non-nuclear weapon states, the statement said.

“With the exclusion of the first two pages that contain the preamble [of the draft IAEA agreement] and a couple of other exceptions, the text is largely modelled on IAEA safeguards agreements with non-nuclear weapon states.”

While the five nuclear weapon states accepted only voluntary, revocable inspections and had the sovereign right to terminate their agreement, the safeguards applicable to India would be “perpetual, legally irrevocable obligations which India cannot suspend or end, even if the supplier-states cut off supply of fuel and replacement parts.”

Asked why the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, and the National Security Adviser in the Vajpayee government, Brajesh Mishra, expressed support for the nuclear deal and the IAEA draft proposals, Mr. Sinha said he and Mr. Shourie had also studied the relevant documents carefully. “There are different points of view. We too have some knowledge about this subject.” He said: “We cannot be taken for a ride.”

Mr. Shourie asserted that India had “enough uranium for its [current] 22 nuclear reactors” and the only difficulty was mining it.

Asked whether the country needed a deal at all if fuel supply was not a constraint, Mr. Sinha said, “We want a deal to enable India to undertake nuclear trade, [to buy] other things that we need and are currently banned [because of sanctions].”

Mr. Sinha said he did not see a problem in India renegotiating the deal afresh in the future. For, there was nothing in the international environment that suggested such negotiation would become more difficult. “How can India accept a non-nuclear weapon status when India indeed has nuclear weapons? Why accept the status of have-nots, when we rightly belong to the haves category?”

Mr. Shourie said the 123 Agreement and the IAEA draft agreement talked about a “strategic partnership” between India and the U.S., but “without any strategy. That is the problem.”

At the outset, the BJP leaders categorically said their party and its allies would vote against the trust motion to be moved on July 21. “We will vote against the government. On July 22, the government will be defeated.”
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