Deal only if India caps: NPT lobby

India, which expects the Bush administration to carry the day with the Congress, has refused to cap the production of nuclear material except in an multilateral treaty arrangement. More fundamentally, India has no desire to renegotiate the July pact under any potential pressure from the Congress.

Nevertheless, the new strategy from the opponents of the nuclear deal appears to seek ‘‘reasonable’’ changes rather than outrightly reject it holds the biggest threat to the drafting of a new Congressional legislation to favour civilian nuclear energy cooperation with India. This ‘‘yes, but’’ approach of the non-proliferation commmunity is likely to test all the resources and skills of the Indian lobbying effort in Washington to wrap up enough Congressional support in the next few months in favour of the nuclear pact.

With the setting up of a framework for ‘‘bargaining’’ between the Congress and the administration on the July pact, the opponents of the deal might be hoping to force India to walk away from the deal.

In the first set of hearings held by the House International Relations Committee last month, two top officials of the administration, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns and his colleague Robert Joseph, faced tough questioning on India’s attitude towards the Iranian nuclear deal.

While the Iran issue has not lost all its political salience in the Congress after the Indian vote with the European resolution at the IAEA last month, the focus at the second set of hearings by the HIRC is on the nitty gritty of the nuclear deal itself.

Among the five experts invited to testify before the House International Relations Committee today was Robert Einhorn, who was actively involved in nuclear negotiations with India under the Clinton administration. Reflecting the strong sentiment in the non-proliferation community that the US gave away too much in return for too little from India, Einhorn called for a recasting of the July 18 agreement in order to transform it ‘‘from a net non-proliferation loss to a net non-proliferation gain’’.

The ‘‘damage’’ to the non-proliferation regime, according to Einhorn, can be minimized ‘‘if several improvements are made in the course of implementing’’ the July nuclear pact.

‘‘The most important improvement would be an Indian decision to stop producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons,’’ Einhorn told the Committee.

‘‘Without a moratorium on fissile material production, the US-India deal could actually facilitate the growth of India’s nuclear weapons capability,’’ he added. Under the current nuclear dispensation, India has to make a painful choice between using its scarce natural uranium resources for either peaceful or military purposes, he pointed out.

Under the n-pact with the Bush administration, Einhorn argued, ‘‘India could satisfy the needs of the civil programme through imports, freeing up domestic uranium supplies for the weapons programme and permitting, if the Indian government so decided, a continuing and even major increase in bomb-making material. A production moratorium would preclude such an increase’’. The other modifications he suggested include a ban on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to India, tighter safeguards on the civilian nuclear facilities Delhi plans to bring under international control, and the drafting of generic language for civilian nuclear energy cooperation rather than an India specific nuclear exemption.

India, which insists that it must be treated on par with other nuclear weapon powers, is unlikely to accept any of the proposed ‘‘improvements’’.