After The Left, China...

The next three steps in India's quest for civilian nuclear energy would be

• the approval of the  draft of the India-specific safeguards agreement jointly prepared by officials of the government of India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the Board of Governors of the IAEA before it is formally signed by India and the IAEA,
• a consensus in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) on the removal of the restrictions on nuclear trade with India and
• the approval of the agreement (known as the 123 agreement) reached by the officials of the US and India by the US Congress.

While the decisions of the  IAEA and the NSG would determine theconditions under which the member-countries of the IAEA and the NSG would tradewith India in civilian nuclear matters, the US Congress would decide theconditions under which the US would trade with India in the nuclear field.

The IAEA is expected to take a decision by the end of August and the NSG inthe beginning of September if the US has its way. It has been reported thatPakistan, which is a member of the Board of Governors of the IAEA, has alreadysubmitted a long memorandum to the IAEA raising objections to the proposedsafeguards agreement on procedural ground, on grounds of merit and on the groundthat it would amount to unfair discrimination to Pakistan.

The procedural objection is that the required minimum notice has not beengiven to the member-countries of the Board of Governors  to consider theagreement carefully and that an attempt is being made to rush through theapproval process. The objection on merit relates to alleged dangers of diversionof uranium purchased by India from overseas suppliers for weapons purposesthereby adding to the threat to Pakistan. The charge of unfair discrimination toPakistan is sought to be justified on the ground that there is no simultaneousattempt to lift the NSG restrictions on nuclear trade with Pakistan. It islearnt that Pakistan has suggested to China that the two should co-ordinatetheir positions at Vienna just as they had co-ordinated their positions on theissue of permanent membership of the UN Security Council for India..

Pakistan is not a member of the NSG and would, therefore, have to depend onChina for taking up the issue of alleged unfair discrimination to Pakistan.Since his recent visit to Japan to attend the G-8 summit, during which he metPresident Hu Jintao of China bilaterally in the margins of the summit, PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh and his advisers have been expressing the confidencethat there may not be any difficulty from China. That was before Pakistancirculated its objections .

It has been noticed since the Sino-Indian war of 1962 that whenever there wasa conflict between Indian and Pakistani interests  and between Indian andPakistani concerns on any issue, Beijing  favoured the Pakistani interestsover the Indian and paid greater attention to Pakistani concerns than to Indianconcerns.

The first departure from this practice was seen during the Kargil conflict of1999 when Beijing agreed with the US position that Pakistan should withdraw itstroops behind the Line of Control (LOC). It was the Chinese insistence on thisduring the visit of Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to Beijing at theheight of the conflict that made Nawaz fly to Washington DC  and requestfor a face-saving to enable Pakistan to withdraw its troops behind the LOC.

However, China agreed with Pakistan's position of opposing the permanentmembership of the UN Security Council to India.  Chinese interlocutors whomI have had an opportunity of meeting in various seminars  denied thatPakistan's opposition had in any way influenced the Chinese position. Accordingto them, China opposed India's permanent membership because the Government ofIndia tried to ride piggy-back on Japan.

These interlocutors also felt that in the NSG China would strongly underlinethe need to remove the restrictions on nuclear trade with Pakistan withoutlinking it to the lifting of the restrictions on nuclear trade with India. Would it be so? India has to keep its fingers crossed.

In this regard, it would be useful to also have a look at an article writtenby me last year, tracing the evolution of the Chineseposition on this issue till then.