The US media has summarised and perpetuated similar views. “The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived as having caved in to key Indian demands,” The Washington Post reported on Sunday. “To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence.”

In the midst of the prevailing frustration, one group is privately pleased that the agreement may be scuttled at this juncture: the nuclear non-proliferation lobby. These critics have argued from the outset that the exception being made for India would adversely impact the global nuclear regime, and lobbied with little success to prevent the deal’s consummation, or at least limit its effects. Unable to stifle the deal in the White House or Congress, they watch gleefully as forces in India appear ready to do their work for them.

Important as the agreement is in the US, its future is being scrutinised as carefully, if not more so, in Paris. Favourable comments by the French Ambassador to India, Dominique Girard, should not come as a surprise, nor should statements suggesting that France has agreed to back India in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). France is among the countries most reliant on nuclear energy, which provides about 75 per cent of the country’s electricity and has one of the most advanced nuclear energy infrastructures.

French nuclear suppliers have at least one distinct advantage over their American competitors. As economist Swaminathan Aiyar explained in a recent article, no US supplier will likely take advantage of the nuclear agreement until India enacted a liability protection law. Consequently, state-owned Russian or French companies, which may be willing to supply nuclear equipment without liability protection, could be among the major direct beneficiaries of India’s integration into the civil nuclear mainstream.

... contd.