By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-Indian nuclear trade agreement proposed by the Bush administration would assure New Delhi of a continued supply of nuclear reactor fuel even if it resumes nuclear weapons testing, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, April 6).
India has insisted upon the “fuel assurances” arrangement in negotiations, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told Global Security Newswire following an event promoting the deal on Capitol Hill. “It was a major issue of the negotiations,” said Burns, who led U.S. negotiations on the deal. “I think that was reassuring to them as we stepped up to the final negotiations.” Critics of the agreement are calling the provision a fundamental flaw, saying it diminishes any penalty India would pay for future testing. “To me, this is the most egregious aspect of the deal. We would be obliged to help India find fuel elsewhere after it tests nuclear weapons, after imposing sanctions due to our public law,” Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center said by e-mail. “I think it’s sort of smoke and mirrors,” said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a former Defense Department nonproliferation official. The fuel assurance arrangement “kind of overrides everything, because it reduces the amount of risk for India to proceed to test,” he said. “It reduces regret to nearly zero,” Sokolski added. Burns said officials negotiated the arrangement with the expectation the deal would last. “India’s a law-abiding nation. It’s a democracy and India’s a trustworthy nation. So we’re not going into this deal looking for the five ways to get out of it. We’re going into this deal to complete it and to continue it and sustain it.” The United States cut off contracted nuclear fuel supplies to India before, in 1980, after Congress prohibited nuclear cooperation with countries that tested atomic weapons and lacked international safeguards over all their nuclear facilities. That 1978 law continues to bar U.S. nuclear trade with India because of its ongoing weapons program and nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998. India also is restricted from nuclear trade with most of the world’s nuclear technology exporters, through the Nuclear Suppliers Group, because of its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration last month outlined a bilateral agreement that requires the United States to press the Nuclear Suppliers Group into waiving its restrictions on India, and press Congress to exempt India from the U.S. restrictions. India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In implementing legislation forwarded to Congress last month, the administration wrote that U.S nuclear exports to India would be blocked again if India tested another nuclear device. However, in a written agreement as part of a deal to ensure the continuity of international inspections in India, the United States pledged four measures to “guard against any disruption of fuel supplies,” including by supporting an Indian effort to develop a nuclear fuel strategic reserve and to arrange for foreign supplies if U.S. ones were cut off. “We’ve agreed to set up a council of advisers — India and the United States and other countries — so that if there is ever a threat of interruption of [U.S.] supply, those countries could meet to figure out how to maintain supply to India,” Burns said during a March 2 press conference in New Delhi He did not note at the time that the assurances would carry even if India resumed testing. Fuel Supplies Were Cut Off BeforeIndia required the fuel assurances in exchange for its commitment to allow permanent international safeguards on whichever nuclear facilities it designates as civilian. Fourteen of New Delhi’s 22 reactors would be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision under the plan, while eight would be designated as military sites and not be placed under safeguards. Burns said Indian leaders were concerned about a potential replay of the U.S. fuel cutoff to India’s Tarapur reactors after New Delhi conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. The United States in 1963 had agreed to supply India with fuel until 1993, in exchange for IAEA safeguards on the reactors. Congressional restrictions passed in 1978, however, required an end to fuel sales and other nuclear cooperation due to the test and because India would not accept safeguards on all of its nuclear materials. The United States ended nuclear cooperation with India in 1980. France began supplying fuel to New Delhi after the Reagan administration in 1983 negotiated a three-way deal in which India agreed to put the Tarapur facility under safeguards. Sokolski said that future testing, after the Nuclear Suppliers Group restrictions are lifted and India has gained access to foreign supplies of nuclear fuel, is a distinct possibility. “There are a lot of technical reasons why they’ve got to do it. Now they’re saying they want to catch up with the Chinese, or at least some of the [Indian] hawks are — a 400-plus minimum of weapons in 10 years,” he said. “You’re going to want to go thermonuclear, they can’t do that without testing,” he said, referring to a type of nuclear weapon potentially hundreds of times more powerful than the supposed fission weapons India tested in 1998. Sokolski said some U.S. former “advisers and people who served as ambassadors who are lobbying for the agreement” have made statements that “make it very clear that people in the councils of our administration think that maybe India getting more weapons and better rockets is something that we need to embrace.” Indian officials have suggested they have no plans for significantly expanding their arsenal. If “we remain committed to a credible minimum deterrent, if our posture so far has been one of restraint and responsibility not disputed even by our critics, there is no reason why we should suddenly change now,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said in Washington last month. However, Indian negotiators resisted requirements to cap the nation’s nuclear weapons fissile material production. Experts say the nuclear material safeguards regime India has proposed for the deal would enable an expansion of its nuclear weapons production capability from as many as 10 to as many as 50 weapons per year. India is estimated to have up to 200 weapons. India also resisted swearing off future nuclear weapons testing, favoring instead a voluntary moratorium, Burns wrote in a written statement to Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in November. “Based on our interactions with the Indian government, we believe that additional conditions such as implementing a moratorium on fissile material production, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT], and/or joining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state ‘would likely be deal-breakers,’” he wrote. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, testifying before Congress Wednesday, said India resisted full safeguards as part of the deal because it wanted an ability to expand its program in the future. “They want to reserve the possibility, given the neighborhood that they live in, and given the politics that they have engaged in, the politically adversarial relationships that they’ve had in that region, to increase their strategic program,” she said. “But I would again note that the restraint has been considerable. It remains a relatively small program,” she added. Burns said yesterday he believes India is negotiating the deal out of genuine interest in civil nuclear cooperation with the United States. “We believe that India is going into this particular arrangement because it wants to increase its civil-nuclear, it needs the investment and technology, and needs to have it legally permissible under U.S. and international laws. So there’s an incentive there for India to maintain the deal, as there is for us,” he said. “We’re going into [the deal] with the glass three-quarters full, not three-quarters empty,” he said. India Would Not Be ConstrainedIndian officials have sought to reassure domestic critics that the Bush administration’s proposed implementing legislation would not obligate India to forgo nuclear weapons testing forever. Some of those critics have expressed concern that India would be overly constrained by the deal. According to former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee yesterday, as reported by The Times of India, “This bill, when passed, will convert a voluntary moratorium on further tests by India into a legally binding commitment, for all times to come, without any possibility of withdrawal under special circumstances, as provided for in the CTBT. This position is not acceptable.” “India should retain the right to conduct nuclear tests if any other country, such as China on Pakistan, were to do so,” he reportedly said. “When non-testing in perpetuity becomes a condition under U.S. law for Washington’s help — and that of the Nuclear Suppliers Group — with civilian nuclear technology, it is tantamount to India agreeing to follow the CTBT and limit further development of its nuclear arsenal,” according to a front-page commentary in the Calcutta newspaper The Telegraph on March 18. While future testing could end U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation in accordance with U.S. law, Indian Foreign Secretary Saran said at an event in Washington last month, India would not be legally barred from resuming testing by U.S. law or the proposed deal. It is a matter of existing U.S. law “that if there is a state that is exploding a nuclear device, then that would trigger off an end to U.S. cooperation with that country. As a part of U.S. law that is fine. It is not a part of an India-U.S. treaty or understanding,” he said.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department yesterday denied that a planned, massive conventional explosion in Nevada in June is intended to model a low-yield nuclear weapon strike on an underground facility, despite official statements and budget documents that declared that as the purpose (see GSN, April 7). The experiment, called “Divine Strake,” is to involve the detonation of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil on the ground above a specially constructed tunnel through limestone at the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site. The Washington Post today reported that the Pentagon said the budget documents had contained errors. The Defense Department “clarified” that the test was “not designed to simulate a low-yield nuclear explosion,” but rather some future massive conventional weapon or simultaneous use of conventional bombs. The article said Pentagon officials “apologized to members of Congress yesterday for generating fears about an unusual military experiment.” Globalsecurity.org Director John Pike, whose Web site on Saturday claimed the test was intended to support nuclear planning, called the explanation described in the Washington Post “a hoax, a fantasy, patently unrelated to reality.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday said that the head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency assured him that the planned June 2 test would not be “a nuclear rehearsal,” according to the Associated Press. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency in its fiscal 2006 budget submission to Congress did not portray it as a rehearsal, but rather as an experiment to provide data on how the shock from a low-yield nuclear weapon would damage hardened, underground facilities that contain weapons of mass destruction or other threats. From the data, a planning tool would be developed “that will improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage,” it said. In its fiscal 2007 budget documents delivered to Congress in February, the agency removed explicit reference of intent to support low-yield nuclear planning from some but not all of descriptions of the program, Federation of American Scientists analyst Hans Kristensen noted in an analysis on his Web site. The reported denial also contradicts statements by Defense Threat Reduction Agency spokeswoman Irene Smith on Tuesday and Wednesday to Global Security Newswire. Smith, after inquiring with the program’s manager and chief scientist, made it clear the test was intended to inform decisions on nuclear yield in war planning. “Yes, in answer to your question, the event that is described is Divine Strake. The key thing is, better predictive tools will reduce the uncertainties involved in defeating very hard targets and therefore reduce the need for higher yield weapons to overcome those uncertainties,” she said Wednesday, reading from a statement. Nongovernmental experts say there is nothing in the U.S. conventional arsenal or under development that could possibly produce the amount of explosive blast used in the test, equivalent to 593 tons of TNT. “Its insulting people’s intelligence,” Pike said. Smith stressed that the test would not involve conducting a live nuclear weapons test, and that the agency “will not be conducting any future nuclear tests.” The United States has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and has had a moratorium on nuclear testing since the early 1990s. A statement released by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and posted on its Web site today did not deny the experiment is intended to support nuclear war planning. It is not explicit about what type of military capability it is intended to benefit. “This experiment supports the Tunnel Target Defeat Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (TTD ACTD), which is intended to improve the warfighters’ confidence in their ability to plan to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets,” it says. It notes, “The test does not use a nuclear device, and it does not test a weapon.” Perhaps to avoid misunderstanding that the test might employ an actual nuclear device, it also substitutes for mention of a “mushroom cloud,” a phrase used by DTRA Director James Tegnelia last week, the explanation that the test could produce a “dust cloud that may reach an altitude of 10,000 feet.” The agency also in a “frequently asked questions” page on its site notes the test would not detonate a conventional bomb, as reported by the Post last week, but rather “stacks of the explosive ammonium nitrate-fuel oil.” That page does not address whether the test is intended to help with nuclear weapons planning.
Some proliferation experts have warned that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, in the hands of a weak government in a sea of radical Islamic influences, could be the most dangerous nuclear challenge facing the United States, the Newhouse News Service reported today (see GSN, April 6). Among international challenges facing the United States, “Pakistan is the most horrific and the hardest one to do anything about,” said Charles Furguson, a senior nuclear proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. The United States lacks the troops that would be needed to quickly “lock down” all of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons sites in the event of an attempted coup or a terrorist attack, officials and analysts said. The only option might be to destroy the weapons with nuclear strikes rather than risk terrorists acquiring them. “To date we don’t have anything that can get there quickly, except for a nuclear weapon,” Assistant Defense Secretary Peter Flory told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, speaking generally about targeting terrorists that obtain nuclear weapons. Officials have defined “quickly” as one to four hours, according to Newhouse. “For that small, highly important set of targets … a goal we have set is to be able to address those targets in one-hour anyplace” with ballistic missiles, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told the same panel. The U.S. Defense Department has conducted war-game scenarios in which Islamabad loses control of some component of its nuclear arsenal or even all atomic weapons. However, Pentagon officials declined to comment on the issue. “Unclassified answers do not exist,” said spokeswoman Lt. Col. Tracy O’Grady-Walsh. While some analysts have said that the Pakistani military has firm control of the arsenal, RAND Corp. strategic analyst John Gordon said there must be consideration of the danger. “If you fail to secure nuclear weapons in a country that may be torn by a civil war, coup attempt or insurgency, you fail massively,” Gordon said. Operations experts believe tens of thousands of U.S. troops would be needed to seize Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Disassembled Pakistani nuclear weapons are reportedly divided between six sites. A nuclear reactor in Joharabad and the Kahuta uranium enrichment facility would also have to be secured, according to Newhouse. “We lack the military capability,” said Bruce Nardulli, a specialist in ground warfare at RAND. “These sites would have to be brought down and secured, locked down, simultaneously, in the middle of a huge conflict and among a hostile population. You’d need an army much larger than what you have today” (David Wood, Newhouse News Service/New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 7).
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said yesterday that Washington is already looking beyond U.N. diplomacy to address Iran’s nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 5). “It would be, I think, simply prudent to be looking at other options,” he said. Bolton said the United States could freeze import allowances for Iranian goods such as rugs and pistachios, and look at financial sanctions similar to those imposed on North Korea (see related GSN story, today). Other governments could also impose financial and travel restrictions, he added. “The Iranian government ... can get out of the trap they’ve put themselves in by reversing the strategic decision to seek nuclear weapons, and the example that's out there of what lies in store for them is the case of Libya,” he said. Tripoli’s decision to eliminate its WMD programs paved the way for its re-entry into the international community. Bolton said the Security Council’s “obvious difficulty” in offering a small criticism of Iran last month “says something about the difficulty of the road ahead” (Anne Gearan, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 7). International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said he desires “cooperation and transparency” from Tehran, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday. “I hope we will get the maximum cooperation and transparency from Iran that will enable us to provide a positive report, but I can only tell you that when our inspectors come back,” he said. Agency inspectors are expected to arrive in Iran today, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 6). As the United States already has few economic dealings with Iran, sanctions against the country would have little effect on U.S. markets. However, other countries that Washington would count on for support of such a policy are likely to suffer economically, the Los Angeles Times reported today. Those same allies also view their cooperation in the effort as insurance against military action by the United States or Israel, the Times reported. One senior U.S. official said Washington had been pushing China, India, Japan and Russia to use their exports to Iran as leverage. One German official said his country makes billions of dollars in exports to Iran. France, meanwhile, is ready to sign major gas deals with Tehran, he added Another U.S. official said sanctions could lead to major social pressure in Iran. “Potentially, in a couple of years there could be revolutionary conditions on the Iranian street,” the second official said. “It will take a real threat of sanctions, or actual sanctions, to get the regime to have a change of heart” (Richter/Rubin, Los Angeles Times, April 7). A senior Iranian official, Mohammad Nahavandian, is in Washington to push for talks with the United States, a top Iranian adviser told the Financial Times. The United States has said any discussions — which are not yet scheduled — would be limited to Iraq-related security issues. “There are none and none are scheduled,” White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley was quoted by a spokesman as saying about possible talks in Baghdad next week. One source said the Bush administration could broaden the agenda after an initial meeting strictly on Iraq (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, April 7). Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Javad Zarif yesterday reaffirmed Tehran’s stand that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and is prepared to negotiate for its right to enrich uranium. “Iran has a strong interest in enhancing the integrity and authority of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” Zarif wrote in a New York Times commentary. “Iran’s reliance on the nonproliferation regime is based on legal commitments, sober strategic calculations and spiritual and ideological doctrine,” he wrote. “Iran is ready for negotiations,” he added. He said Tehran has adopted extensive confidence-building measures, including a voluntary suspension of enrichment activities for two years, and has volunteered to ratify a protocol on more intrusive international inspections. “Iran has declared its eagerness to find a negotiated solution — one that would protect its rights while ensuring that its nuclear program would remain exclusively peaceful,” Zarif wrote (Javad Zarif, New York Times, April 6).
Indian Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal yesterday defended New Delhi’s decision to designate eight of its 22 nuclear reactors as military, arguing that India needs nuclear weapons for its defense, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 6). Under the terms of the Indian-U.S. nuclear technology sharing agreement, India must separate civilian and military nuclear facilities. Only civilian sites would be opened for monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “It would be very unfair on India to say that you shouldn't bother about your security concerns and put all your nuclear plants under safeguards,” he said in Washington yesterday. “The security concerns are defensive in nature, not offensive.” “When you say that eight of the 22 nuclear facilities are out of safeguards, it’s because of our security concerns and (the United States’) recognition of the fact that India has security concerns,” he said, referencing nuclear rival Pakistan. Sibal was in Washington as part of a campaign by the Indian government and the White House to convince U.S. lawmakers to approve the deal. The science and technology minister also said that India has been “impeccable in our nonproliferation record” and has behaved better than some Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty signatories. “If our record as being a country outside the NPT is better than the record of countries that are part of the NPT, I don't see how anybody can object to our being concerned about our security,” he said (Foster Klug, Associated Press/San Diego Union-Tribune, April 7).
North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator and his delegation arrived in Japan today to attend a security conference, with officials from the five other countries involved in talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program also expected to show up, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 6). Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said he “would not reject” a request for bilateral talks with U.S. officials during the session, but that it was not his primary mission while in Tokyo. “I’m here for the security meeting,” Kim said. “It has nothing to do with the six-party talks. The U.S. already knows what they should do to resume six-party talks” (Hans Greimel, Associated Press/China Post, April 7). The United States does not plan to lift financial sanctions on North Korean entities allegedly engaged in illicit financial activities, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said yesterday. Bolton said North Korea should change its behavior if it is displeased by U.S. policy, the Yonhap News Agency reported. “It’s inconceivable to me that the United States would not take steps to prevent the manipulation of its currency, violation of its laws, or behavior that would support … the advance of the North Korean nuclear weapons program,” he said (Yonhap I, April 7). Meanwhile, Pyongyang and Seoul have announced that they would resume bilateral talks later this month, Agence France-Presse reported today. North Korea last month pulled out of the negotiations in protest of U.S.-South Korean military drills but has now proposed meeting in Pyongyang from April 21-24, Seoul’s Unification Ministry announced. Seoul is likely to use the meeting to seek a return to six-nation nuclear talks, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse, April 7). A U.S. expert on North Korea predicted that the U.S. standoff with Pyongyang is likely to deteriorate, Yonhap reported yesterday. “As time goes on, I am expecting, I am waiting for North Korea to act in a provocative manner, to lash out verbally, potentially even with a missile or even a nuclear test,” said Peter Beck, the North East Asia project director of the International Crisis Group. “Especially as Washington continues to try to squeeze them, and they are going to look for a way to get the world's attention by saying or doing something that is provocative.” “I am very pessimistic (about the future of the six-party talks),” he said. “Washington is not serious about negotiating. They are not willing to compromise. They are not willing to have an active bilateral dialogue with North Korea,” he added (Yonhap II, April 6).
The Bush administration plans to remove all weapon-grade plutonium and uranium from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California by 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today (see GSN, April 6). While mentioning the Savannah River Site in South Carolina as a possible destination for the material, Livermore spokeswoman Susan Houghton said yesterday that the final stop for the material is not yet known. Some officials have mentioned the possibility of consolidating all U.S. plutonium at a Nevada facility. “Our plan is to remove all category one-two SNM (special nuclear material) from LLNL (Livermore lab) by the end of 2014,” National Nuclear Security Administration official Thomas D’Agostino told a House panel on Wednesday. The laboratory stores 880 pounds of plutonium and several kilograms of highly enriched uranium, officials told the Chronicle. Plutonium capacity at the site is now set at 1,540. Federal investigators have questioned laboratory safety and Livermore’s potential to become a terrorist target. In 2004, plutonium was found in the noses of five employees. However, Bush administration officials have until recently discussed doubling the amount of plutonium at Livermore, according to the Chronicle. Houghton said she does not know whether Livermore might increase its plutonium stockpile before it is removed. “It’s too soon to say exactly what the present plans are,” she said. Some local activists expressed support for the decision to consolidate the materials. “We applaud the decision to remove plutonium from Livermore lab even as we realize the devil will be in the details,” Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CARES said in a statement released yesterday. The group, however, advocates removal of the material even sooner than the administration’s deadline, the Chronicle reported (Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle, April 7).
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