The high-profile nuclear cooperation deal that lies at the heart of warming ties between India and the U.S. has run into serious trouble over the fine print.
Officials on both sides are expressing growing frustration over each other’s seeming intransigence in overcoming the final obstacles to sealing the agreement, which would reverse years of U.S. policy and allow American companies to sell and share civilian nuclear technology with India even though it has refused to join the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.
When proposed nearly two years ago, the nuclear pact made headlines as proof that the world’s most populous democracy had joined hands with the most powerful to create a new balance of power, especially as a counter to a rising China.
But negotiators have been unable to reach agreement on issues concerning India’s right to conduct nuclear tests, its desire to reprocess spent fuel and its demand for assurances of uninterrupted nuclear fuel supplies.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is scheduled to meet with U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns in Washington today and Tuesday to give added impetus to efforts at finding a solution, amid signs in both countries that patience is wearing thin.
“Burns is now increasingly frustrated,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They feel they bent over and pushed this deal. Now it’s time for the Indians to step up and close the deal.”
‘Shrill comments’
Here in the Indian capital, the souring mood is summed up in regular news reports blaming the stalemate on the Americans’ “rigid stance” and huffing at what one newspaper called “increasingly shrill comments” by senior members of the Bush administration.
Considerable political will remains on both sides to finalize the agreement, which President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lobbied hard to sell to their respective legislatures. Many regard the deal as the most visible symbol of improving relations between the two countries, and of growing acceptance of India’s status as a rising, nuclear-armed power.
But the areas of contention bedeviling the accord are proving tough to resolve, particularly because they touch on sensitivities relating to Indian sovereignty and bitter historical memory.
India exploded its first atomic device in 1974 and became a declared nuclear-weapons state nine years ago, after a nuclear test in the Rajasthani desert that prompted archrival Pakistan to follow suit, sparking fears of an arms race in South Asia. The U.S. slapped economic sanctions on both countries, but relaxed them after Sept. 11.
Though the proposed nuclear agreement would exempt India from the U.S. ban on technology transfer to countries outside the international nonproliferation treaty, Washington would still be bound by law to suspend assistance if New Delhi conducted more nuclear tests.
“Such a requirement is an affront to India’s sovereign prerogatives,” the daily Hindu said in an editorial last week, echoing the argument of many critics of the deal. “It is therefore completely unacceptable.”
At this point, neither side appears willing to budge.
“We’ve made it clear we’re not going to change the laws,” U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Another area of dispute is India’s insistence that it be allowed to reprocess nuclear fuel from the U.S. to extract plutonium, which it says would be used only for peaceful purposes as it seeks to increase power production to keep its economy booming.
The U.S. has granted reprocessing rights to its European allies and to Japan for decades. But officials say that Washington’s relationship with New Delhi, one marked by distrust and suspicion for most of its history, has not matured enough for the same treatment to be extended to India.
That feeling of suspicion still resonates today among politicians and intellectuals here in India, on both the left and right. New Delhi says it has felt the sting of U.S. bad faith and betrayal in the past.
