No unilateral end user inspections,US wrote

In a letter written by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) to the Joint Secretary,Planning and International Cooperation,in North Block this year,Washington has made it clear that it will not seek unilateral inspections. The letter was sought by North Block in the run up to the EUMA negotiations that were carried out by Defence Secretary Vijay Singh with DSCA Director Vice Admiral Jeffery Wieringe and Mitchel Shivers,Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asia and Pacific Security Affairs.

A senior government official said the entire EUMA process is based on a consultative mechanism with the US and has been successfully concluded to keep the option of weapon supplies from the US open from a strategic point of view. India does not have any such agreement with either Russia or France or Israel.

While the NDA leaders and the Left have called EUMA a “sell out to the US”,the fact is that New Delhi already has signed ad hoc end user agreements during the acquisition of two ANTPQ 26/27 weapon locating radars,special protection suites for Boeing business class VVIP jets and landing ship USS Trenton. There is nothing in the agreement that restricts the deployment of a weapon against any third country.

Sources said that while the letter of agreement for weapon locating radars was signed during the NDA regime in 2002,the end user agreement was signed in 2007. The LOA on Boeing business jets was signed in 2004 during the UPA regime but the end user certificate was signed in 2006 after the special protection suites were installed. The end user certificate for USS Trenton was also signed in 2006.

The end user certificate requirement dates back to the Indira Gandhi regime when Americans found that New Delhi was using US inertial navigation systems on Soviet MiG-21 fighter jets in 1983. This led to an Indo-US MoU a year later. The present EUMA has been agreed to after two years of negotiations between New Delhi and Pentagon.