'Binding India's Future'

Press Statement of the BJP on the Indo-US nuclear deal issued on 10th December,2006.

The senior leaders of the BJP met today at the residence of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee to discuss the implications of the Act passed by the US Congress to give effect to the nuclear deal with India. Alongwith Shri Vajpayee, Shri L.K. Advani, Shri Rajnath Singh, Shri Jaswant Singh, Shri Yashwant Sinha and Shri Arun Shourie attended the meeting. There was a detailed discussion on the subject and the party’s position is set out below:

Immediately after the Prime Minister concluded the nuclear deal with US on 18 July, 2005, the BJP had unambiguously stated that as far as the US was concerned, the sole objective of the deal was to cap India’s nuclear weapons programme. As the months passed by and the US position became clearer by the day, our worst fears stood confirmed. The Act passed by the US legislature leaves us in no doubt that the purpose of the deal is to impose on India, bilaterally, conditionalities which are worse than those incorporated in the NPT and the CTBT, in perpetuity and without an exit clause. This is why a three and a half page Bill which was suggested by the US Administration to the US Congress became a 23 page Bill in the US Senate and the final Act is now a41-page document.

The final Act has become lengthier because it includes the stringent provisions of both the House as well as the Senate Bills. The small changes made during the Conference stage are cosmetic and not substantive. So, if "determination" has been replaced by "reporting" and "certification" by "assessment", it hardly reduces the rigour of the deal for India. The fact of the matter is that ever since July 2005, the US has been shifting the goalposts and thegovernment of India has not only been acquiescing in it, but adopting them as the latest benchmark. We shall not be surprised, therefore, if thegovernment tries to adopt a brazen attitude even on this latest assault on the sovereignty of our nuclear programme, as some of the apologists of the deal have started doing already.

The Act, as passed by the US legislature, is not acceptable to the BJP. Its provisions fly in the face of the assurances given by the Prime Minister to Parliament from time to time. Obviously, the US Congress and the Bush Administration attach no importance to these assurances.

The "final product", for which the Prime Minister asked us to wait, is before us. The US Administration is bound to ensure that the bilateral 123 agreement, the IAEA safeguard agreement, the Additional Protocol and the NSG "consensus" on the deal will have to be in line with the Act of the US Congress. The Prime Minister, therefore, cannot tell us to wait for yet another "final product".

The Act :

• militates against full civil nuclear cooperation with India;
• the certification and reporting requirements continue to be rigorous;
• there is no assurance of uninterrupted fuel supplies even for our civilian reactors;
• in fact, the provision is to the contrary, India cannot reprocess the used fuel nor can it ship it back to the US unless the US Congress approves the reshipment;
• the moratorium on the production of fissile material remains a key US objective;
• India has been expressly forbidden from nuclear testing in future even of the kind permitted by the CTBT;
• the US retains the right to carry out its own end use verification in addition to IAEA inspection, India’s nuclear weapons programme will be subject to intrusive US scrutiny through the requirement of cooperation in research with the National Nuclear Security Administration; and
• the Act expects India to adhere to the obligations contained in international protocols like the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement, about which the Prime Minister had himself stated India has reservations, and obligations which India has refused to accept in the past.

The deal is more unequal than ever before. The principle of parity, on which the Prime Minister had placed so much emphasis, stands abandoned. Reciprocity and sequencing of the various steps, again something on which the Prime Minister had placed so much emphasis, have been given a go by. The assertion of thegovernment all along that through the 18 July, 2005 statement, government had ensured that India would obtain the same rights as other States like the US is no nowhere in the discussions and legislation.

Worse, in spite of the assurances of the Prime Minister to Parliament, the US Act seriously compromises the independence of our foreign policy. India is not just to toe the line of the US in regard to Iran, it is being afforded this cooperation on the ground among others that its foreign policy will be "congruent" with that of the US.

Furthermore, the Act aims at capping, rolling back and eventually eliminating India’s nuclear weapons capability. There is an absolute ban on further tests – including sub-critical tests and those for peaceful purposes. This will completely stymie India’s technical advancement in this vital sphere. By going in for agreement under this legislation, thegovernment is binding India’s future – in security as well as technical advancement.

The country will note that nuclear scientists have by and large opposed the deal and the intrusive and restrictive provisions of it.

The BJP, therefore, demands that the government reject the Act passed by the US Congress, instead of accepting the humiliating conditionalities contained in it.