A day before the crucial Nuclear Suppliers Group meets to consider exempting India from nuclear trade restrictions, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrat Howard Berman, among the few to vote against the Hyde Act, has made public confidential correspondence between the US Congress and Department of State on the 123 Agreement.

The 26-page letter was written to Berman’s predecessor, the late Tom Lantos, on January 16.

First reported by The Washington Post, the non-proliferation lobby projected the conversation as showing “duplicity” between what the US itself plans to follow and the “milder” exemption it’s seeking from NSG. The Left and the BJP seized on it to argue that India had bartered its sovereignty to the US.

A close look at the “secret revelations” only underlines what is already in the public domain: the Indo-US understanding on nuclear testing and the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology.

New Delhi refused to comment on the correspondence and said it would be guided by the agreement between US and India. On testing, the MEA spokesperson said: “Our position is well known. We have a unilateral moratorium on testing. This is reflected in the India-US Joint Statement of July 18, 2005.”

US envoy to India David Mulford said the letter had “no new conditions” and “no data...which has not already been shared in an open and transparent way with members of Congress and with the Government of India.”

A meeting of senior Congress Ministers was held this evening including Pranab Mukherjee, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and Atomic Energy Commission chief Anil Kakodkar.

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