|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
U.S. Deal Would Aid Indian Nuclear Weapons, Expert Says By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — A potential U.S.-Indian nuclear energy and space technology deal announced in July would probably benefit India’s nuclear weapons and strategic missile program, a former senior Defense Department official said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 20, and related GSN story, today). Not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, India tested a nuclear device in 1974 and nuclear weapons in 1998 and there have been persistent rumors it has planned an ICBM program, according to a 2001 U.S. national intelligence assessment. During a Washington visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July, President George W. Bush announced plans to provide, among other things, civilian nuclear technology to India. The move would require easing a number of U.S export control and nonproliferation laws. If Congress supports a deal, it should at least require that India stop producing military fissile material or any more nuclear weapons, said Henry Sokolski, a Defense Department nonproliferation official during the George H. W. Bush administration and now executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “If you do not put more conditions on nuclear and space cooperation, you will actually be in the business of helping India make bombs and ICBMs,” he said, speaking at an event for congressional staff that was sponsored by a group of Washington think tanks. Sokolski urged Congress to carefully assess the implications of the deal and to avoid rushing to change U.S. law to make it legal. “I don’t think this nuclear cooperation will go very far without enabling legislation,” he said (see GSN, Sept. 9). The conditions Sokolski proposed on ending military fissile material and bomb production could be deal breakers, Miriam Rajkumar, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said at the event. New Delhi has sought to assure the Indian public that the deal “doesn’t restrain us in any way in terms of our military program,” Rajkumar said. “I don’t see India accepting fissile material cutoff. No way,” she said. With the July announcement, Bush vowed to press Congress to change, or exempt India from, U.S. nuclear nonproliferation laws restricting nuclear technology transfers to nations that are not members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or do not allow international nuclear safeguards over all their nuclear activities. The United States also would seek to modify multinational guidelines, including international technology control regimes, to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India. The potential deal also promises closer cooperation on building ties in “space exploration, satellite navigation and launch, and in the commercial space arena,” including by eliminating certain Commerce Department export control restrictions on sensitive technology. As part of the deal, India would place nuclear facilities and programs it designates as nonmilitary under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Sokolski said proposed cooperation on space-launch vehicles would inevitably benefit Indian plans to develop an ICBM, which he said were under way. “Although it seems like a friendly thing, you need to remember that all space-launch vehicles in our expendable launch inventory were derived from ICBMs, those are intercontinental ballistic missiles,” he said. U.S. satellite launch assistance to China in the 1990s, “really did help their military program,” he added. Sokolski said ICBMs are not needed for striking regional rival China — India’s medium-range missiles can do that — but could give India an ability to reach the United States and Europe. “What the heck do they need this for?” he said. The 2001 U.S. intelligence assessment said, “Some Indian defense writers argue that possession of an ICBM is a key symbol in India’s quest for recognition as a world power and useful in preventing diplomatic bullying by the United States.” U.S. aid to India’s nuclear energy program would enable the country to put more resources into making fissile material for bombs, Sokolski said. “If we give the [lightly enriched uranium] fuel, it will open up [India’s] enrichment plant to make 12 more bombs a year,” he said. If mixed-oxide fuel, which contains plutonium, is supplied, “then it’s worth 75 crude bombs per year,” he added. The potential deal threatens to unravel the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Sokolski said. Every U.S. presidential administration since John F. Kennedy “has put small knives into the back of nuclear restraints,” Sokolski said. The proposed Indian deal, however, is “bigger than the others. And since the patient’s got a lot of wounds already, it could really push it from the emergency ward into the morgue.” India’s 1974 “peaceful” nuclear test “demonstrated that nuclear technology transferred for peaceful purposes could be used to produce nuclear weapons,” Congressional Research Service specialist Sharon Squassoni stated in an Oct. 6 report for Congress. Prior to the test, the United States had encouraged peaceful Indian nuclear development, supplying light- and heavy-water reactors and allowing Indian scientists to study at U.S. nuclear laboratories, she wrote. Since that test, Congress passed tough export control restrictions, and “the United States has refused nuclear cooperation with India for 25 years and has convinced other states to do the same.” Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph, at a Sept. 18 House International Relations Committee hearing, said Indian commitments to greater restrictions of its technologies and to submit designated civilian nuclear programs to international oversight would “on balance, enhance the global nonproliferation efforts, and we believe the global nonproliferation regime will be strengthened as a result.”
| ||||||||||
Back to top
