Fourth, India alone would decide what sort of protocol to negotiate with the IAEA.

Finally, the fullest precautions had been taken to keep confidential the secrets vital to our weapons programme — about the materials, processes, facilities, future plans, the R&D work we are doing or will be doing in regard to this programme.

Even as we were being fed these doses, senior officials of the US Administration were stating clearly what objective the US is pursuing through the agreement, and the sort of status India would have vis a vis the IAEA safeguards. In her Opening Remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on April 5, 2006, Condoleezza Rice stated categorically, “India is not and is not going to become a member of the NPT as a nuclear weapons state. We are simply seeking to address an untenable situation. India has never been party to the NPT...but this agreement does bring India into the nonproliferation framework and thus strengthen the regime.”

She was just as explicit in her speech at the inaugural meeting of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin on July 10, 2006: “Let me be clear: We do not support India joining the NPT as a nuclear weapons state. Rather, the goal of our initiative is to include India, for the first time ever, in the global non-proliferation regime. By requiring India to place two-thirds of the existing and planned nuclear reactors under the watchful eye of IAEA, the initiative would be a net gain for the cause of non-proliferation...”

... contd.