Growing protests

The deal fails to meet the assurances given by the Prime Minister to Parliament, says CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat.

Left parties leaders

DESPITE the hard sell by the Indian government, the nuclear deal with the United States has found very few takers among the Opposition parties. It has also come in for criticism in Washington and other foreign capitals. The powerful non-proliferation lobbies all over the world have started to swing into action in a last-ditch attempt to thwart the deal. Editorials in important newspapers in the U.S. have demanded that Congress take a stand against the 123 Agreement with India.

The popularity of U.S. President George W. Bush has plunged to abysmal levels and his administration is already in a lame-duck phase. Experts are of the view that the U.S. Congress has to give its approval by December. Otherwise, they feel, it will be difficult to formalise the deal. U.S. politics is in election mode, with the Republicans and the Democrats gearing up for the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. In retrospect, in India, it was naive on the part of the ruling Congress to expect the Left to give its imprimatur to the deal. From the outset, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had said that the negotiations were being conducted in secret by the emissaries of the government and that it was not kept in the loop. After studying the 123 Agreement in detail, the Left parties unanimously rejected the nuclear deal. In a statement on August 7, they pointed out that the nuclear cooperation agreement should not be seen in isolation from the overall strategic tie-up with the United States. The deal, the Left parties emphasised, was an integral part of the July 2005 India-U.S. joint statement, which had political, economic and strategic aspects. The statement added that the nuclear agreement was closely linked with the June 2005 military framework agreement signed between the U.S. and India.

Prakash Karat, CPI(M) general secretary, told Frontline that the 123 Agreement could not be viewed in isolation. He said it should be seen in the context of the U.S. Hyde Act, which all American administrations would have to abide by. The Left parties have been emphasising that the new bilateral agreement cannot escape the wideranging provisions of the Act. A number of provisions of the Hyde Act passed by Congress could be used to coerce India into supporting American foreign policy goals.

The Hyde Act calls for annual certification and reporting to Congress by the President on a host of foreign policy issues. The administration will have to certify annually that Indias foreign policy is congruent to that of the United States.

Pressure on New Delhi to toe the Bush administrations hawkish position on international issues has been evident for some time now. Iran is only an illustration. Top Bush administration officials have been making statements, virtually on a daily basis, asking New Delhi to distance itself from Teheran.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, the Bush administrations point man in the 123 negotiations, aired his opinions on the subject in early August, just after the Indian Cabinet approved the deal. Burns told the media that Washington expected India to be part of the international mainstream in trying to deal with one of the most difficult security problems we face today.

More specifically, he demanded that India diminish its trade with the nuclear outlaw Iran. His boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recently opined that India should distance itself from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). She and other senior Bush administration officials have been saying that India should walk out of the proposed gas pipeline deal with Iran.

It is a known fact that Indias vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year to send the Iran dossier to the United Nations Security Council was done under pressure from Washington. According to Rajiv Sikri, a senior diplomat who recently retired from the Indian Foreign Service and was very much involved in Indias dealings with the U.S. and Iran, the U.S. coerced India into voting for such a referral. According to Sikri, Washington wanted proof that India would be willing to adjust its foreign policy to converge with the American global agenda. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Irans top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani had expressed their sadness about Indias volte face on the issue in interviews to The Hindu and Frontline last year.

Many Indian policy-makers are of the opinion that assured energy supplies from Iran are more important for India than civil nuclear energy. Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, while describing the deal as a shame, pointed out that even after the setting up of new nuclear plants, nuclear energy would constitute only 7 per cent of Indias energy needs. We can instead import coal, which can be done without conditionalities and set up power plants along the coastline, V.P. Singh told the media.

Karat told Frontline that ultimately it would be U.S. national law that will prevail in the interpretation of the nuclear deal. Washington, he said, expects a quid pro quo from India. Washington expects India to become a key ally. The deal fails to meet the assurances given by the Prime Minister to Parliament, said Karat. According to him, the deal will also place restrictions on Indias use of dual-use technologies.

The joint statement released by the Left parties stated that under the provisions of the Hyde Act, it was clear that one of the key assurances given by the Prime Minister to Parliament on August 17, 2006 that India-U.S. nuclear cooperation would cover the entire nuclear fuel cycle would be violated.

BJP leaders Arun

The statement noted that the 123 Agreement denies access or cooperation in any form whatsoever to fuel enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production technologies. The statement of intent in the agreement that a suitable amendment to enable this access may be considered in the future has little or no operative value.

The Left parties joint statement also said the Hyde Acts position on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty is unacceptable. Burns recently stated that the nuclear deal with India was about advancing the global U.S. non-proliferation agenda. He told the Council of Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank, that the 123 Agreement would bring India into the non-proliferation system in such a way that it does not strengthen its military arsenal.

Another key area of disagreement the Left has is regarding the Prime Ministers assurance of Indias acceptance of safeguards in perpetuity in exchange for guarantees of uninterrupted fuel supply. The Hyde Act explicitly states that the U.S. will work with other countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to stop fuel and all other supplies to India if the agreement is terminated.

China has not made its position clear so far, but Beijing is known to be wary about the implications of the deal. Top Bush officials have said that one of the motivating factors behind Washington pushing for the deal was to turn India into a truly great power. The American foreign policy establishment has been looking at India as a natural ally as it prepares to face up to China, the new emerging superpower. The Chinese leadership on its part is cautiously observing the strategic moves being made by the U.S. and its allies in the Eurasian region.

The CPI(M) general secretary said his party, unlike the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had taken a stand against nuclear testing for weaponisation, but this did not in any way mean that the country should accept U.S.-imposed sanctions on the countrys sovereign right to go in for a nuclear test.

Karat pointed out that unlike the BJP, which has also opposed the nuclear deal, the Left had a principled position on issues relating to non-alignment and disarmament. The BJP has also not spoken about the growing U.S. influence in the region. New Delhi has taken a back seat, as Washington is calling the shots in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The BJP has said that it will seek a revision of the 123 Agreement if voted back to power. The party has also proposed that the agreement should be put to vote in both Houses of Parliament. An External Affairs Minister in the NDA government, Yashwant Sinha, claimed that his party had consistently opposed the deal in Parliament whenever discussions on this deal have taken place.

Congress functionaries claimed that the BJP sought a similar deal with the U.S. when it was in power. It was the BJP leadership that had been consistently harping on the U.S. and India being natural allies. They said the NDA government actively pursued such a deal during its last years in power.

Initially, there seemed to be some confusion in the BJP ranks on the 123 Agreement. Former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, both close confidants of then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, seemed to be veering towards endorsing the deal. Mishra has since issued a statement criticising some aspects of the deal. The BJP, in a statement, said the party is of the clear view that this agreement is an assault on our nuclear sovereignty and our foreign policy options.

Yashwant Sinha said the U.S. had asked for the right to inspect Indian military and civilian nuclear projects and to send in their inspectors in the garb of experts. He alleged that the U.S. would also use the agreement as a pretext to intervene in negotiations between India and the IAEA. Sinha also claimed that under the new agreement, two-thirds of Indias reactors in the civilian category would be put under safeguards. No effort was ever made by it [the government] to evolve a national consensus on this vital issue of national concern before making commitments to the U.S., the BJP statement said.

The Left, which will raise the issue in Parliament, has advised the Central government against the nuclear deal being operationalised. The Congress has rejected the demand of the Left parties for a Constitution Amendment Bill that would make parliamentary clearance a must for all important international agreements. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated that there was no question of going back on the agreement. He told Left leaders in the second week of August that the Union Cabinet had approved the agreement and it was therefore now non-negotiable. He said that renegotiating the deal would create a crisis in the United Progressive Alliance government.

Karat told Frontline that the Left had not thought of withdrawing support to the government. He said the Left parties would further intensify their struggle against the government to make it reverse its pro-American foreign policy. The Left parties announced that massive rallies would be held all along the east coast of the country as the navies of the U.S., Australia, Japan and Singapore prepare for joint exercises in September.