A word dropped, a word inserted and the assurances are fulfilled!

That was in August 2006, soon after his speech in the Rajya Sabha in which the prime minister had drawn the lakshman rekha below which India would not go in its negotiations on the nuclear deal.

When the US House of Representatives had passed its bill, and when the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions would jeopardise our strategic interests, we were all told, ‘But this is just the House Bill. Our concerns will be taken care of in the Senate bill.’ When the Senate passed its bill, and the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions made even deeper inroads into our strategic interests than the House version, we were all told, ‘But we have to wait for the Joint Conference of the two Houses to hammer out a final version. That will take care of our concerns.’ When the final version was passed, and the fact could no longer be denied that it had in it the harshest features of each version, we were all told, ‘But India is not bound by laws made by any other country. We have to wait for the 123 Agreement. That will take care of our concerns.’

In the case of the US, the relevant ‘national laws’ include the original Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nonproliferation Treaty Act, and the Hyde Act of December 2006.

To take just one example, the very Section of the 1954 Act under which the ‘123 Agreement’ is entered into — Section 123 — states that, should any nuclear device be detonated for any reason whatsoever, not only shall all nuclear commerce be halted with the country, the US shall have the right to demand the return of ‘any nuclear materials and equipment transferred pursuant’ to the agreement for cooperation as well as any ‘special nuclear material produced through the use thereof if the cooperating party detonates a nuclear explosive device.’ ‘For any reason whatsoever’, the Joint Conference of the two Houses made explicit, shall also include ‘for peaceful purposes’ — the ground we had invoked for the 1974 test! This provision is re-emphasised in the Hyde Act. Section 106 of the latter states explicitly, ‘A determination and any waiver under section 104 shall cease to be effective if the President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this Act.’

... contd.