Changing goalposts

BOMB: In principle I am against the bomb. When India exploded it, I paraded on the streets of Delhi, along with 5,000 people, to register protest. On Pakistan following suit, I met the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Islamabad to express my horror.

He defended himself by pointing out that he would not have exploded the bomb if Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had not done so.

Probably so, India's own stand has changed in the last four decades or so. Mahatma Gandhi was firmly opposed to the bomb. So was Jawaharlal Nehru. In his fortnightly letter to state chief ministers, Nehru said that he was against all nuclear arms tests, over-ground or underground.

In a preface to a book by D.S. Kothari, a scientist, Nehru criticised nuclear weapons and the havoc they could cause.

Still, the Congress Government went ahead to produce the bomb while the BJP-led coalition exploded it. What has revived the debate on its use or control after several years is the Indo-US nuclear agreement which is taking the shape of a law. I wish we had been leading a movement on nuclear disarmament the world over.

But we have got stuck in a bilateral agreement with America. The treaty is looking more and more unequal as it is unfolding itself.

There are no two opinions that India's needs for energy are immense and immediate. Whether Nehru would have gone through Washington as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done is difficult to imagine because India has represented the non-aligned world.

Nehru was, however, clear that "whatever policy we may adopt and whatever laws we may frame, the basic fact is scientific and industrial progress," not nuclear weapons. That Manmohan Singh chose Washington to help New Delhi overcome its energy problems is not wrong.

What is wrong is to allow America to shape and reshape the agreement to suit its own policies and perceptions.

President Bush's undertaking was to give India exactly the "same rights and privileges" as five recognised nuclear powers have. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reminded us that India will never be a member of the nuclear club. We knew this from the beginning and did not mind the undefined status so long as the same "rights and privileges" were given to us.

Whatever changes the US Congress and the Senate have in the original bill go beyond the agreement. New Delhi has kept its people in the dark because of drumbeaters and vested interests in the country. My suspicion is that the US administration expected its legislative bodies to recommend what they had in view and what New Delhi was reluctant to concede.

The closed-door briefings to Senators and Congress men were for that purpose. But it has left New Delhi in the lurch, at a stage where it cannot gulp down all that America wants it to do and at the same time it cannot leave whatever it is getting because it needs energy badly.

It is apparent that Washington has changed the goalposts, although President Bush denies the allegation. I shall go by what our top scientists say.

They are worried and irritated because what is emerging will come in the way of India's independent action. One eminent scientist has gone to the extent of saying that India would have been better off by signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha has pointed out how a deal for nuclear energy has turned into an exercise on non-proliferation.

Manmohan Singh's "concern about certain aspects," the phrase he used at the G-8 summit in St Petersburg before talking to Bush, indicates that America led us up the garden path. It is good that we discovered this before our parliament adopted any legislation.

We should ask America to implement the joint statement made by Manmohan Singh and Bush last July in letter and spirit. That the US Congress and the Senate have passed different bills, contrary to the undertakings given, is America's problem, not ours.

India was promised that none of our facility would be placed under international safeguards scrutiny until all trade and technology restrictions on Delhi were lifted. Now "full civil cooperation" is not on the plate because the US Senate has ruled out the export of different nuclear technologies except under tightly controlled circumstances.

America had agreed to India's discretion to separate civilian nuclear facilities. Now New Delhi has to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a "complete" declaration of civilian nuclear facilities and materials.

The agreement with the IAEA will not be India-specific but one that conforms to its "standards and principles." Now that parliament is discussing the deal it should be examining it word by word, rejecting what has been added after the joint statement.

The Manmohan Singh government should realise that a lot of fears have been aroused because of observations made by the US administration and its two houses. The Prime Minister should take the country into confidence to allay people's apprehensions. Transparency is also the best way to meet the criticism that there are certain underhand dealings. He should also be attending to the new development that Pakistan is building a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium.

India should not be in arms race and should be concentrating on getting energy fast. It is willing to cooperate with America for "restructuring of the international system" but not on conditions which are out of the joint statement.

Manmohan Singh has reportedly complained to Bush about additions and he has promised to do something. My hunch is that Bush too wants most of the restrictions which the Congress, the Senate and the State Department have placed. I hope I am wrong.

Whatever the outcome, the nuclear deal will have an impact on India-US relations. The deal is the first major step that America is taking for proving that India is its "strategic partner" in this part of the world.

Yet the manner in which the agreement is being anvilled indicates that the US administration remains the same grasping, unrelenting power and knows no bounds to serve its interests.

New Delhi has yet to contradict the CPI (M)'s allegation that CIA has penetrated our intelligence system. Rabindra Singh, the missing RAW man whom America helped cross Nepal, is now living in Virginia.

New Delhi made no fuss about it. One US third secretary had intimate relations with certain RAW and IB officials and had returned to America safely.

Our problem is the presence of Washington Patriots in our midst as we had Peking Patriots during the 1962 war against China. They are spreading the impression that the nuclear deal was the best thing that had happened to India. I hope the government realises that they represent the interest of America and not that of India.