U.S., India Ready for Next Steps of Nuclear Deal

U.S. President George W. Bush plans Monday to sign into law legislation that clears a major hurdle in the path of U.S.-Indian nuclear trade, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 12).

Congress last week approved a bill exempting New Delhi from U.S. nuclear nonproliferation laws, allowing the Bush administration to focus on the next stages of implementing an agreement that would permit the sale of nuclear technology and materials to India.  For decades, U.S. law has prohibited atomic trade with nations that are not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“There are still many steps before it becomes something that is complete,” said Michael Levi, a nonproliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Those steps include:  preparing a bilateral pact, known as a “123 Agreement” for its place in U.S. law, on the technical details of the proposed trade; finalizing an international inspections system that would monitor India’s civilian nuclear sector; and modifying international nuclear trade guidelines set by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.

“There is a long process towards the finish line, but it is not going to be, in my judgment, as difficult as the last 18 months,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.

Levi said negotiating the inspections agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and altering the NSG guidelines would be the “primary obstacles.”

“The main point of conflict is over how permanent the safeguards will be,” he said.

India earlier agreed that safeguards would be permanent, Levi said, but later asked for the freedom to step away from them if the U.S.-Indian cooperation were to fall through.

Under the legislation passed last week, the United States would end its cooperation if India were to conduct another nuclear test, AFP reported (P. Parmeswaran, Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Dec. 12).

Meanwhile, India has undertaken a campaign to build international support for the deal. 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew today to Japan to urge leaders there to support the necessary NSG modifications. 

Japan has not yet decided whether to back changing the group’s key guidelines, which require that all nuclear trade recipients be NPT parties to allow international oversight over all their nuclear facilities, AFP reported.

“On the one hand, there are the people who say that we should at least publicly approve of the pact and then Japanese firms can benefit,” said Takako Hirose, a South Asia expert at Senshu University in Tokyo.  “But there are some people who are sort of NPT fundamentalists.”

A Foreign Ministry official said Japan would hear what Singh had to say and see what the 123 Agreement looked like before formally adopting its policy.

“We should wait for these developments before Japan can define its own positions,” the official said (Shaun Tandon, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Dec. 13).

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