Congressional Doubts Persist on Indian Nuclear Deal

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Experts and U.S. lawmakers at a hearing yesterday continued to question the Bush administration’s proposal to allow India access to U.S. nuclear energy technology, saying it could benefit Indian nuclear weapons and ICBM programs and harm nonproliferation efforts (see GSN, Oct. 13).

The proposal requires changes to numerous U.S. export control laws, created by Congress in the 1970s following an Indian nuclear test in 1974, which prohibit nuclear technology transfers to countries not under full international safeguards.

A senior U.S. official last week suggested that India’s support for U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program had eliminated much congressional opposition to the deal. At an International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meeting last month, India voted in favor of a resolution declaring Iran in noncompliance with its international safeguards obligations (see GSN, Sept. 26). New Delhi, however, issued a statement to indicate that it did not wholly endorse the finding. The board passed the resolution by a majority vote, the first time a major safeguards decision was not approved by consensus.

“Since the Indian government was very clear and decisive to vote in the IAEA, that issue has disappeared in the U.S. Congress and we now find substantial support in the U.S. Congress for the agreement reached in July,” Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told an Asia Society gathering last week.

“I think by the time President [George W.] Bush visits [New] Delhi, and India, in the early winter of 2006, you will have seen both governments have met our commitments, and I hope President Bush and Prime Minister [Manmohan] Singh will be in a position bring this agreement into effect,” he added.

House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) yesterday disputed that opinion in opening comments at a hearing on the India proposal.

“I am troubled by a number of public statements by administration officials that congressional support for the overall agreement is broad and that our consent is virtually guaranteed. I do not understand how these statements could be made with Congress having yet to be fully consulted,” he said.

Restating his criticism from a hearing last month, Hyde said the administration still has given Congress “little if any information … regarding either the details of its ongoing discussions with the Indian government or the legislation it plans to introduce.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a briefing yesterday that India would first need to “take several steps,” including separating its civilian and military nuclear facilities, “before we actually present any agreement to the Congress.”

Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Executive Director Henry Sokolski, testifying before the committee yesterday, warned that the administration’s press to quickly finalize a deal by early 2006 could undercut Congress’s ability to shape its details.

“I think you folks need to weigh in … before they pre-empt your legislative power,” he said.

While Hyde said he was undecided about the proposal, some committee members did appear to have made up their minds — both for and against the agreement.

Ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) said New Delhi’s vote at the IAEA meeting had resolved his “deep concern over India’s relationship with Iran.”

“I am pleased … that India has since demonstrated that it takes this new partnership with Washington seriously,” he said.

While the details of the proposal “are still being worked out,” Lantos expressed confidence the deal could be modified to satisfy Congress. It should also cause a “strengthening of the international nonproliferation regime,” including by increasing international safeguards on Indian technology and extending its moratorium on nuclear testing, he said.

Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) said the deal would destroy the United States’ credibility as an international nonproliferation advocate.

“In the 60s, India signed a 30-year agreement with the United States to only develop peaceful uses from the nuclear technology we exported to them. India broke its word and detonated a test nuclear bomb in 1974. India then refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and today almost all of India’s nuclear facilities are not subject to the IAEA safeguards,” he said.

“Now, we have U.S. officials actively proposing to join India in breaking its word, looking the other way, rewarding India for bad behavior. This is unacceptable.  We either have a treaty or we do not. And if we allow India a pass, [we’ll have] a long line of other countries that will expect the same pass,” he said.

Only one of the five experts asked to testify at yesterday’s hearing expressed enthusiastic support for the proposal.

“This new policy gives the U.S. an additional ally in the international effort to restrict the flow of [nuclear] technology,” said Neil Joeck, a senior fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Global Security Research.

While “important concerns have been raised about the details of the safeguards,” he said, “we should not overlook the powerful symbolism of the step that India has already taken,” such as its proposed commitment to help negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for weapons.

The other four experts expressed concerns. Each suggested ways in which the proposal could be amended, such as by requiring India to stop producing military fissile materials, ending nuclear weapons production, and precluding cooperation between the two nations on sensitive fuel-cycle capabilities.

“I think the deal at least as it currently stands is a loss for nonproliferation,” said Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser on international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

India’s proposal to separate military and civilian nuclear activities and place the latter under international safeguards is “largely symbolic,” he said, as it “has no effect on India’s ability to keep on producing fissile material for nuclear weapons at facilities not designated as eligible for safeguards.”

Without additional requirements on the deal, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, “it will be difficult to have confidence that the agreement will not cause serious damage to nuclear nonproliferation.”

If India fails to end fissile material production for nuclear weapons, U.S. nuclear assistance “would likely spill over into India’s nuclear weapons program,” he said.

The international community could perceive the agreement as rewarding ongoing bad behavior by India, said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

He said India’s violation of nonproliferation obligations persist today, with its continued use of a Canadian-supplied research reactor in its nuclear weapons program. The CIRUS reactor, donated for nonmilitary use in 1956, still “features prominently” in India’s nuclear weapons program by supplying a significant amount of plutonium, Spector said.

“What matters is the question of whether or not the United States should undertake new nuclear commerce with a country that is misusing old nuclear commerce, partly from us but mostly from Canada,” he said.

Approving the proposal in its current form would help India expand its nuclear weapons arsenal, give technical support to its ICBM program, and undermine efforts to restrict nuclear and missile proliferation, according to prepared testimony by Sokolski.

Representative Edward Royce (R-Calif.) said curbing the spread of nuclear weapons should be the overriding consideration when evaluating the administration’s proposal.

“The goal of curbing nuclear proliferation, which is a global concern, should trump other factors when gauging this deal. WMD proliferation is that great a threat,” he said.

Lantos, on the other hand, suggested that fostering a strong U.S.-India strategic alliance and enlisting India as an ally in preventing Iranian proliferation should be key factors for Congress as it considers the deal.

While members should be informed about the technical aspects of the deal, he said, “At the end of the day, we will still be left with the necessity of making decisions on the basis of political and strategic criteria.”

There are “overarching strategic [and] political criteria which must be brought into play before Congress decides to act,” he said.

Einhorn, however, argued that the proposed deal suggests a deprioritization of nonproliferation by the United States. “In general, the deal conveys the message that the United States, the country that the world has always looked to as the leader against proliferation, is now giving nonproliferation a back seat to other foreign policy goals.”

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