U.S. Lawmakers Trust Indian Nuclear Intentions

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Before approving draft legislation to waive export controls on India’s nuclear weapons program, U.S. lawmakers last week rejected proposed requirements that India not use such exports to indirectly increase its nuclear weapons capabilities, with key members arguing India could be trusted not to do so (see GSN, June 29).

The House Armed Services and the Senate Foreign Relations committees last week overwhelmingly approved legislation that would waive 27-year-old export restrictions on India despite its nuclear weapons program.

Critics of the bill have argued that allowing India access to foreign uranium for civil energy production would free up limited Indian uranium reserves that would enable the nation to massively expand its weapons capabilities.

“This agreement should not be used to accelerate India’s nuclear weapons program,” said Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Key supporters argued India could be trusted not to do so.

“Part of my reason for voting for it is based on trust. Now that’s not usually a good way to vote for agreements,” said Senator Joseph Biden (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

“But part of this is based upon my trust in the present Indian government’s and Indian peoples’ intentions, and their commitment beyond the letter of this, their commitment to the spirit of this agreement,” he said.

Many senators “believe that in the underlying agreement there is already a sufficient understanding of the [proposed] division” between India’s civil and military activities,” said Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), citing the proposed terms of a nuclear cooperation deal the Bush administration is negotiating with India.

Biden was among Democrats and Republicans who voted 13-5 to defeat an amendment proposed by Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) requiring the U.S. president to obtain assurances from India that U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel would not “facilitate the increased production by India of highly enriched uranium or plutonium” in nuclear weapons facilities.

Senator George Allen (R-Va.) said Feingold’s provision could “offend the sensibilities of a sovereign nation, a country who we are trusting,” and could be “potentially a deal killer.”

The prospect that Feingold’s amendment would prompt India to pull back was also why Senator Lincoln Chaffee (D-R.I.) said he would vote against it even though he said he supported its intent.

In the end, Kerry voted for the unsuccessful amendment, which he said would have merely reaffirmed a key understanding in the proposed deal.

“I think the amendment was harmless in that regard. I think it just further expressed what is an already agreed upon expectation,” he told Global Security Newswire just after the vote.

He said he was not concerned that India would expand its nuclear weapons capabilities with assistance from the deal. “I’m not concerned about it. I don’t believe that that will happen.”

House International Relations Committee members rejected a similar amendment proposed by Representatives Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) as well as one put forward by Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that would have required India to end weapons fissile material production before it receives U.S. fissile material.

“If you think that Prime Minister Singh represents the people of North Korea and that he’s suddenly going to rip off his Gandhi mask and reveal that he’s really [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il, then there’s cause to be concerned. But what we’re dealing with is a historic, long-term, demonstrable ally of the United States,” said Representative Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.).

Representative Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) argued the United States could not impose on India decisions about its strategic weapons capabilities and called the amendments “deal killers.”

Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) said such amendments would be deal killers, but in an opening statement also urged the administration “to pay close attention to congressional concerns.”

The House committee instead passed a nonbinding amendment stating that United States trade will not help India build nuclear weapons, and one that would encourages India to reduce its fissile material production for weapons.

The nonbinding measures are insufficient, said one congressional critic after the House vote.

“The Committee failed its responsibility to safeguard American national security by refusing to bar assistance a foreign nuclear weapons program,” said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who is not on that committee.

U.S. and Indian experts have said India could increase its annual nuclear weapons production capacity by at least five-fold, to 50 per year, were it to obtain foreign fuel now barred by the United States and other nuclear suppliers because of its nuclear weapons program. Some have said India also could manufacture more powerful thermonuclear weapons were its domestic resources freed up.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty requires its parties not assist in any way the nuclear-weapon programs of states such as India that have remained outside the pact.

In answers to questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, the State Department acknowledged that more indigenous uranium could be available for India’s weapons program if foreign sources were available. It argued though that that the supply would not violate the treaty, asserting the treaty was not intended to prohibit such indirect benefits.

Ten critics responding to the statement argued such trade would violate the treaty’s requirement to refrain from assisting a state’s nuclear-weapon program “in any way” (see GSN, June 21).

Deal supporters also have pointed to statements by Indian officials that they have and intend to maintain a “minimal credible deterrent” of nuclear forces, to argue India will not greatly expand its arsenal.

Indian officials though have refused to say what that phrase means, said Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball in an interview Monday. “The administration is simply hoping that India will exercise restraint.”

At an event in Washington in March, India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said his government has “provided as part and parcel of this agreement” an “assurance to our partners that whatever they do with us in the civil nuclear energy field will not have any kind of impact as far as our strategic program is concerned.”

“There is no reason why it should be expected that merely because we have an agreement on Civil Nuclear Energy Cooperation that suddenly the floodgates will be opened by India for larger and larger nuclear weapons. That is certainly not how we see our intention,” he said then, according to a partial transcript on the Indian Embassy Web site.

U.S. officials have insisted the United States and India have entered a new era of trust. 

“Today, there is a new strategic partnership between our countries, a partnership based on democratic values, common interest, strong commercial ties and a climate of trust and good faith between our governments,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech Thursday.

Critics have said that if India’s current government were to lose power in some future election, its assurances of restraint be disregarded.

India’s leading opposition party and nuclear weapons establishment “have given every indication to believe that they would like to expand India’s strategic nuclear capabilities,” Kimball said.

A leader of India’s top opposition party, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, said so much according to a The Times of India story Friday. “Our strategic muscle will slip into U.S. hands once our deterrence is reduced. BJP reiterates that such a deal is unacceptable and cannot bind India in the future,” BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi said in the story. His party, when in power in 1998, ordered five nuclear weapons tests.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) last week argued India’s intentions matter less than what capability the proposed deal might provide it.

She cited a recent Congressional Research Service assessment regarding treaty compliance that “the question for the United States is not whether India intends to ramp up its weapons program with freed-up uranium, but whether U.S. and other states’ actions create a new capability for India to do so” (see GSN, June 29).

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