While the Opposition is calling the end user monitoring agreement (EUMA) with Washington a “sellout”, the US has given in writing to the Ministry of Defence that Pentagon will not unilaterally ask for inspections in the event of India buying weapons in future.

Government sources told The Sunday Express that firewalls had been built in the standardised EUMA text— signed during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India last week— so that even the date and timing of inspections, if at all required, will have to be bilaterally agreed without any side forcing its will on the other.

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.

... contd.