The way out

“But Vajpayee himself announced a voluntary moratorium on further tests,” they shout. A voluntary moratorium is one that can be ended at our discretion should circumstances so warrant. What is being done under this new law of the US is to convert a voluntary moratorium into a legally binding bilateral agreement.

“But Vajpayee himself told the UN General Assembly that India was willing to convert its voluntary moratorium into a de jure one,” they shout. The position the government took was that India would do so by signing the CTBT when forty four countries signed up to bring it into force. These countries included the US, China, Pakistan, and the 41 others that are listed in the draft. As the US Senate itself has rejected the CTBT, where is the question under that statement for converting our voluntary moratorium into a de jure one?

In any event, the government is bound by what the present PM assured Parliament. He emphatically told Rajya Sabha on August 17, “There is provision in the proposed US law that were India to detonate a nuclear explosive device, the US will have the right to cease further cooperation. Our position on this is unambiguous. The US has been intimated that reference to nuclear detonation in the India-US Bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement as a condition for future cooperation is not acceptable to us. We are not prepared to go beyond a unilateral voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing as indicated in the July statement.”

But the first step

In a word, the US Congress has not attached the slightest weight to the assurances the PM has given to Parliament. Instead, the most stringent features from the House and Senate Bills have been taken and incorporated into the final Act.

And this is but the first round. Remember what the two Under Secretaries of State, Robert Joseph and Nicholas Burns, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pressed about the aspects that had not been covered, Burns and Joseph urged the Senate to “resist the temptation to take actions that will prejudice our ability to realise the important and long-standing nonproliferation objectives embodied in the initiative.” They urged it to see that “The commitments India has made under the Initiative are a significant gain over the status quo.” From four reactors being under safeguards, to two-third — that is, 14 — of the existing ones being under safeguards, to 90 per cent of them being under safeguards in the coming years. And they said, “We believe the best course is to lock in the significant gains reached and then seek to achieve further nonproliferation results as our strategic partnership advances.”

... contd.