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As for the intrusive nature of reporting, officials clarify that India is not required to provide the kind of information the US Congress has mandated the president to provide to the relevant congressional committees. "There are congressional reports for virtually every subject under the sun," said a senior official. The implication: no need to lose sleep over it, particularly as the Indian N-programme is already being reported to Congress, under Section 601(a) of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act, 1978, and Section 620F(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Such reporting doesn’t place any obligation on India to provide information. "There is nothing new in this," the official said.
Government sources further say the statement on nuclear testing in the Act is merely a restatement of the existing US laws. There will be no reference to testing in the 123 Agreement, which would be legally binding. "So if we do conduct a test, we would not be violating any legal commitment; the moratorium is only a policy commitment." These sources further maintain that the reference to the self-imposed moratorium in the July 18 statement is a marked improvement over the earlier NDA government’s willingness to provide de jure commitment on non-testing—and also not stand in the way of the CTBT coming into force.
These sources declare that while the Act is not prepared to tolerate a situation where other Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) members sell trigger list items that the US cannot sell to India, other nuclear suppliers have their own views—and it is debatable whether the US can prevail over them. In other words, India can access reprocessing technology from willing NSG members.
References to Iran, sources say, are present only in the statement of policy and are consequently non-binding so far as Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation is concerned. They point out that significantly the one binding formulation on Iran, introduced in the Presidential Determination section of the Senate Bill, was dropped on the Bush administration’s insistence.
Significantly, senior officials point out, US laws requires that nuclear commerce with another country can commence only if, first, it hasn’t exploded a nuclear device; two, if it agrees to place all its nuclear reactors under safeguards; and three, it shouldn’t be involved in developing nuclear weapons. These three conditions have been waived as far as India is concerned, a waiver significant and unprecedented. So what are the scientists cribbing about, they ask.
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