US aims to make us strategically subservient: Shourie

Source : IBNLIVE.com

How credible are the Bhartiya Janta Party’s concerns about the 123 agreement and the NSG waiver? Those are the key issues Karan Thapar explored on the Devil's Advocate with one of the parties most outspoken critics Arun Shourie.

Karan Thapar: Let’s start with your central objection that the 123 agreement traps India into Hyde Act which will end up emasculating and crippling its nuclear deterrent. Now that India has got a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and can trade with countries like France and Russia, hasn’t the 123 become irrelevant and, therefore, haven’t your concerns and objections become academic?

Arun Shourie: Each time something happens, we say let’s wait for the next one. This is to be seen as a chakravyuh, as an architecture. There are certain things in the Hyde Act, the123 agreement, the IAEA protocol, and there are certain thing in the additional protocols, which are yet to come, which has already been specified in the Hyde Act. In the NSG waiver, there are three other things, so it is all to be taken as a part of architecture.

NSG waiver in the end says that if any member country of the NSG is satisfied that conditions have arisen that it must stop nuclear commerce with India, then all countries should act in accordance of Paragraph 16 of the NSG guidelines.

Karan Thapar: This was in your series of articles in The Indian Express and I’m afraid you’re wrong. You’re referring to Paragraph 3e of the NSG waiver. Paragraph 3e doesn’t say this at all. All Paragraph 3e says is that NSG countries are required to consult and contact on the implementation of the waiver. It does not go as far as you’re suggesting

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Arun Shourie: There is no reason we should have any doubt on that. So I’ll read out to you what it says. I’m reading paragraph 5e: “In the event that one or more participant governments consider that circumstances have arisen which require consultation, participating governments will meet and then act in accordance with Paragraph 16 of the guidelines.”

Karan Thapar: And that does not specify that all countries would stop just because one has stopped. Your interpretation is not just wrong but it is, forgive me, exaggerated.

Arun Shourie: It’s not either. It is exactly the interpretation of the Americans themselves. It is the assurance they have given to their Congress.

Karan Thapar: I’m afraid you’re wrong. The American Ambassador speaking to the Network 18 programme Indian Tonight on Wednesday made it crystal clear that Paragraph 3e does not amount to your interpretation. It doesn’t even amount to a periodic review. It is simply a process of contact and consultation on the implementation of the waiver.

Arun Shourie: That is not what the US Government has told the US Congress. Mr Mulford’s statement should be seen in that context.

Karan Thapar: Forgive me, the US government has not as yet communicated with the US Congress about the NSG waiver at all.

Arun Shourie: No, please understand what they have said in their record of their answers to questions of 45…

Karan Thapar: But that’s not in connection with the NSG waiver. That at best has a connection with the 123. The NSG waiver only happened last Saturday. Paragraph 16 doesn’t lead to automatic termination. I’m afraid your interpretation is a part of the confusion that’s entered into the debate.

Arun Shourie: That’s not the case at all. You’re spreading confusion. You please read the text once.

Karan Thapar: I have read the text. I have researched it thoroughly before I came here. I double-checked with the American Ambassador when he was here on Wednesday. I double-checked with the Indian authorities. No one believes that your interpretation of that paragraph is correct. That’s why I’m saying to you that your concerns emanate from the 123 but now with the NSG coming into place, the 123 is irrelevant. Therefore, your concerns have become academic and irrelevant.

Arun Shourie: Absolutely not. Paragraph 16 of the NSG guidelines provides as follows: “In the event that one or more suppliers believe that there has been a violation of supplier/recipient understanding avoid acting in a manner that could prejudice measure that maybe adopted in response to such a violation.”

Karan Thapar: That does not mean that they have to act in a particular way. Once again you’re over-interpreting.

Arun Shourie: You don’t see the implication of all this?

Karan Thapar: I do — you’re over-interpreting. You’re seeing the worst possible interpretation that is based upon a misunderstanding, perhaps, I would even say, a wilful misunderstanding.

Arun Shourie: That is absolute bunk and nonsense and you’re using words that are not justified by the text. Text clearly says exactly what the Hyde Act has said — if America terminates the trade if it believes India has not acted according to the Hyde Act…

Karan Thapar: For the 123, not the NSG. You’re confusing the two.

Arun Shourie: No. The two are part of an architecture. You have raised these nonsensical words such as exaggerated and wilful misunderstanding…

Karan Thapar: Explain to me why you think that the NSG allows for the whole of the NSG terminating the trade ties because one country terminates. It is against the NSG guidelines…

Arun Shourie: That is not the case. The US government is obliged to ensure under clause 16 of the guideline that if it terminates its commerce with India all other countries will coordinate.

Karan Thapar: That’s Hyde Act you’re talking about. You’re now interpolating that into the NSG guidelines. The NSG is not subject to the Hyde Act. NSG has its own rules. Individual countries of the NSG don’t observe the Hyde Act regulations and stipulations. You’re reading one into the other.

Arun Shourie: … because they are part of an architecture. We have gone to the NSG and the IAEA as a consequence of the 123 and the Hyde Act.

Karan Thapar: I accept that but the essential point you’re missing and, this is the one I want to emphasise, is that now that we’ve got the NSG waiver, the 123 has become academic and irrelevant. If India chooses not to go ahead with the 123, the Americans will be angry and will deem us to as ungrateful but we would have opened a window to unfettered commerce with the NSG, particularly with countries like Russia and France who are not going to accept America’s regulation s on their head.

Arun Shourie: If that were the case, Russia and France would have already entered into nuclear commerce with us despite American blockade.

Karan Thapar: We are the country that has held back. They are keen to go ahead. Their ambassadors have communicated that much to us.

Arun Shourie: That’s only now.

Karan Thapar: No, it was earlier.

Arun Shourie: That is since the statement of the Prime Minister in February 2007 in regard to the four plants that Russia was prepared to give us. We raised the maintenance question — that you went to Russia and the Russians said that the agreement was ready, then why did you not sign it.

Karan Thapar: As a gratitude to America so that they had an even plain field for their companies. It wasn’t because of any legality.

Arun Shourie: That is what I’m trying to say. This is from February 2007. The sanctions we had on Uranium 20 years before that were only of America. But we could not go to France and Russia.

Karan Thapar: The NSG waiver has ended the experience of 30 years. That’s a significant step. What I’m saying is that people may believe or disbelieve your concerns with the 123. They may be valid, they may be invalid but now that that waiver has opened up opportunity for trade with the NSG countries, your concerns with the 123 and the Hyde Act are overtaken and hence irrelevant because they don’t apply to the NSG.

Arun Shourie: When the 123 agreement came you said ‘oh but the Hyde Act is irrelevant.’ Now that the NSG waiver has come, 123 has become irrelevant.

Karan Thapar: That’s because 123 and Hyde Act don’t affect NSG countries. They are separate, sovereign countries.

Arun Shourie: No. It’s a part of the architecture and India will have to pay the consequences after this waiver, as Germany and Japan have said.

Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you the leading non-proliferation authority, Daryl G Kimball of the Arms Control Association in America. He’s made it absolutely crystal clear that the restrictions of the Hyde Act have not been incorporated in any shape and form into the NSG. The Bush administration resisted efforts to incorporate in the NSG waiver the same restriction and conditions on nuclear trade that are mandatory to US law. Now I come back to my point: your concerns about the 123 are academic because they don’t apply to the NSG. The NSG has opened a new window which doesn’t have the same

restrictions and it actually makes up for the deficiencies of the 123.

Arun Shourie: Till yesterday you were saying there are no deficiencies in the 123 and that my interpretation of the Hyde Act is overblown. Now you’re saying all that is academic and NSG is all that counts. That’s not my interpretation. We can go on in circles about this.

Karan Thapar: The NSG waiver doesn’t put any restriction on fuel supply or assurances or upon the size of strategic deterrent that India can develop.

Arun Shourie: We were told the opposite — the NSG waiver will provide for a positive statement about India building strategic reserve, and that IAEA protocol will provide for India taking corrective steps in case…

Karan Thapar: It does permit corrective steps. The IAEA protocol in its preamble does permit corrective steps for India but it doesn’t specify what they are. By definition, corrective steps are something you can’t specify because then you lose the sovereignty of defining them.

Arun Shourie: When we quoted the preamble of the Hyde Act, everybody said the preamble is non binding, but in the IAEA safeguards you say they are binding.

Karan Thapar: In the case of the Hyde Act, George Bush in his signing statement in December 2006 specified that he would not honour and go by section 103 and the preamble. He said so and that’s why people argued that it’s not binding.

Arun Shourie: Again, another complete distortion. Bush’s signing statement had two points that in regard to foreign policy and seeking the determination of American foreign policy to an international body like NSG he would not give up US presidential powers

Karan Thapar: And he would therefore not implement section 103.

Arun Shourie: What is section 103?

Karan Thapar: The one that we’re talking about.

Arun Shourie: Not at all.

Karan Thapar: Yes. The whole of interpretation of the Hyde Act is irrelevant to the NSG

Arun Shourie: You are making assertions about the Hyde Act which are absolute bunk.

Karan Thapar: The NSG has given India fuel assurances. There is no bar on the size of strategic reserve. It gives India unlimited access under NSG concerns to non proliferation and enrichment technologies. It also allows India the right to reprocess. All of those were deemed to be deficiencies by some analysts — deficiencies in the 123 that have been taken care of by the NSG.

Arun Shourie: You are just completely fabricating things which are not there in the guidelines at all. Where is this bit about unlimited supplies in the NSG guidelines?

Karan Thapar: There is no bar. The NSG waiver permits India access to fuel supplies without restriction, it permits India to develop strategic reserves without limitation, it permits India access to proliferation technologies that are so defined to do with enrichment and reprocessing.

Arun Shourie: You are completely lying through your teeth to your viewers.

Karan Thapar: The point is — there is no bar on them. This is a waiver which is an exemption.

Arun Shourie: Karan this is your technique; you slip in your words and mislead the viewers.

Karan Thapar: Do you still believe that your concerns which are limited to the Hyde Act and the 123 apply to NSG countries, which are not subject to the Hyde Act or the 123? Do you still believe it?

Arun Shourie: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: They have no sovereignty?

Arun Shourie: The NSG will work as a club. It says it will coordinate its efforts. Article 16 of the guideline specifies that they must coordinate their efforts. If one country is satisfied that conditions have arisen in which there has been a violation by the recipient country, they will all coordinate the effort.

Karan Thapar: Let’s come to the politics behind your concerns with the nuclear deal. For many people, the BJP is the architect of the relationship with America, which is today culminating in the Indo-US nuclear deal. Yet today, by some amazing transformation, the BJP has converted itself into the principal opponent to its own vision for the future.

Arun Shourie: BJP is the architect of strategic relationship, not of strategic subservience, and we believe that this architecture puts us in a position in which we would have to accept the American umbrella…

Karan Thapar: America’s aim is to make India strategically subservient. Is it a trap that America has set for India?

Arun Shourie: Of course.

Karan Thapar: Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the man who called America India’s natural ally. And today you’re saying that America has set a trap for its natural ally?

Arun Shourie: It is an ally and you have to be very cautious with this ally. Just see what they have made of Pakistan and several other countries.

Karan Thapar: Middle class supporters were exultant when the waiver was granted. Today you are putting yourself in opposition to them.

Arun Shourie: Are you the only one who understands the middle class? Don’t we know about the middle class? It will have consequences for the next three decades and we believe that it does subordinate India in a strategic relationship which is just a first step.

Karan Thapar: Isn’t it interesting that you’re arguing the same point which the CPM in China raised? So is BJP on the side of China when it comes to Indo-US nuclear deal?

Arun Shourie: You can get the CPM fellows and ask them that aren’t they ashamed of the fact that they are arguing the same thing as BJP. Is this even an argument?

Karan Thapar: Why does China not want the deal to go through? They believe that it would give India an opening which should be resisted. You seem to be arguing China’s case for them.

Arun Shourie: I’m arguing that in my view we have a great threat from China and we can not rely on the US umbrella to face it we have to strong independently.

Karan Thapar: Do you have no second thoughts about your criticism on the NSG waiver? You may be right about the Hyde Act, you may be right about the 123, but are you still critical on the NSG waiver?

Arun Shourie: Of course not.

Karan Thapar: Arun Shourie, a pleasure talking to you.

Arun Shourie: Thanks.

The fabrications of government

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, December 12, 2007

If energy security is what we are after, shifting to power dependency on imported technology, reactors, components, uranium, each of which is controlled by an even tighter cartel than oil, is hardly the answer

Explaining his assessment about the cost at which nuclear power would be available, the prime minister told the Rajya Sabha on August 17, 2006, “Arun Shourie asked me what calculations I have seen. I have seen many calculations in the Department of Atomic Energy. In the eighties when K.C. Pant was the chairman of the energy policy committee, a detailed study was done and it was shown that if you are talking of generating power and reaching it to a place 700 km away from a coal mine, nuclear energy is the right economic answer. Things can change. And I think the Planning Commission has done recent work, and they have also come to the conclusion that having the nuclear option is something which will give us a greater degree of security on the energy front.”

Actually, if energy security is what we are after, shifting from power dependent on imported oil to power dependent on imported technology, imported reactors, imported components, imported uranium, each of which is controlled by an even tighter cartel than oil, is hardly the answer. And, as we saw, even the Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy acknowledges this.

As for some study done in the 1980s, the price of uranium used to be $7 per pound then. It is over $140 per pound today.

The change of much greater consequence relates not to the price of uranium, but to that of reactors. The US has not placed an order for a new reactor since 1978 — and that order was cancelled. The last order for a reactor was placed in 1970 — and it took 26 years for that reactor to come into operation. With this attenuation of demand for reactors, the capacity of the US nuclear industry today to build reactors is very limited. By contrast, see what that industry has to do just in the US in the coming years. The MIT report, The Future of Nuclear Power, 2003 — as well as the study by the University of Chicago published the following year — had already established that energy from nuclear sources would be one and a half times to twice as costly as that from coal and gas. Since then an all-important consideration has been the focus of analysis. The US has a total of 103 commercial reactors today. The original licensed life of US reactors used to be 40 years. This life has been extended for forty-odd of these reactors for 20 more years. Even with that having been done, every single reactor of the US will have to be replaced by 2056. Other countries too have plans to build reactors. Given the extremely limited capacity to build reactors, the price that will be charged by vendors is bound to leap up. (A recent study published in April 2007 by the most influential organisation on US foreign policy gives a succinct and authoritative account of the prospect in this regard: Charles D. Ferguson, Nuclear Energy, Balancing Benefits and Risks, Council on Foreign Relations, April 2007.)

What of “recent work” by the Planning Commission that the PM mentioned? The most recent one is the Report of the Working Group on Power, which the commission published as recently as February 2007. The working group lists the cost per megawatt for generation projects. The report places the cost at Rs 4 crore per megawatt for coal based projects; Rs 3 crore per megawatt for gas based projects; Rs 4.50 crore to Rs 5 crore per megawatt for run-of-the-river hydro projects; Rs 5.50 crore to Rs 6 crore for storage hydro projects. And for nuclear power projects? Rs 6.50 crore per megawatt. And, recall, this group was straining to pad up the necessity for nuclear power to justify recourse to the deal.

But we don’t have to go just by estimates: there is an actual and current example. The new unit at Tarapur is supplying power at Rs 2.70 to Rs 2.80 a unit. What is the price per unit that has been accepted for power from the new ultra-mega thermal power project? Rs 1.19 per unit! The moment I recalled this contrast in the Rajya Sabha the other day, Dr Kasturirangan, who had just spoken in favour of the deal, interjected, “That price for nuclear energy is subsidised.” Others who have studied the matter intervened, “Actually the cost is Rs 9 per unit.” So, power at double or seven times the cost from other sources.

Indeed, even at these levels, these Indian estimates of the cost of nuclear power are gross underestimates. To cite just one fact, they do not build in the cost of disposing nuclear waste. The US itself is today plagued by this problem — having spent over $9 billion for developing a storage repository in the Yucca Mountain in Nevada, having striven for two decades to develop the site, the expectation is that the site will not become operational till 2015/2020 or so.

Nor do our estimates build in the cost of the more and more stringent and increasingly expensive security arrangements that will have to be made to prevent theft of fissile material as the number of reactors multiplies. Even countries that have exerted to the utmost to secure such material are experiencing insuperable difficulties. “The nuclear material currently unaccounted for at plutonium reprocessing facilities could make many bombs,” Ferguson notes. “For example, Japan cannot account for more than two hundred kilograms of plutonium at the Tokai-mura plant. In Britain, the Sellafield plant cannot account for about thirty kilograms of plutonium. According to the IAEA, only eight kilograms of plutonium are needed to make a bomb. But even less than that was used in the Nagasaki bomb, which employed six kilograms. More advanced designs could use as little as one to three kilograms.” (In addition to Ferguson’s study, for an instructive analysis of all this see the oft-cited report by Brice Smith, Insurmountable Risks, The dangers of using nuclear power to combat climate change, Institute for Energy and Environment Research, Md., 2006.)

But: “I have seen many calculations in the Department of Atomic Energy. In the eighties... a detailed study was done... And, I think, the Planning Commission has done recent work, and they have also come to the conclusion that...” says the PM. And that is the end of the matter.

The fabrications in regard to uranium

The argument that we need nuclear power would not have been enough to justify the deal — for the response could have been, “All right, use domestically available uranium to generate it.” Hence, two further myths were fomented: we are woefully short of uranium; such uranium as we have is of poor quality.

The authoritative compilation on uranium supplies is what is known as the Red Book of the IAEA and OECD. The latest one — published in 2005/06 — records India’s uranium reserves as being 94,000 tonnes. Of these, 64,000 tonnes are what are termed as ‘RARs’, Reasonably Assured Reserves; and 30,000 tonnes are EAR-I, that is, ‘Estimated Additional Reserves’. Currently we are using 1,334 tonnes a year. By every stretch, these are enough to see us through to the time we will master fast breeder and thorium technologies. What is probably the best available study of the potential of these reserves, Atoms for War? (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006) has been done, in fact, by one of the architects of the deal, Ashley Tellis. In it, he shows that India has more than enough uranium — even if it were to aim in the coming decades at a nuclear arsenal of 2023 to 2228 weapons.

Now see how the twin myths are formented. The Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy states: “India is poorly endowed with uranium. Available uranium supply can fuel only 10,000 MW of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors. Further, India is extracting uranium from extremely low grade ores (as low as 0.1 per cent uranium) compared to ores with up to 12-14 per cent uranium in certain resources abroad.” Notice the sleight of words: our average — 0.1 per cent — is compared to other unspecified countries’ highest, their “up to...”

The facts are more reassuring! The most important suppliers of uranium are Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada — half the world’s output comes from them. The most recent account of uranium reserves, put out as recently as November 2, 2007, again by the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that it is only in Canada that the ore — about a fifth of it — is above the 1 per cent grade. “In Australia, on the other hand, some 90 per cent of uranium has a grade less than 0.06 per cent. Much of Kazakhstan’s ore is less than 0.1 per cent.”

Nor has the government ever explained why we are not able to get more uranium from countries that are not members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group — Niger, Nigeria, Mongolia. Is it that we have been fixated on our traditional suppliers, like Russia? Is it that we have tried but found that, in fact, the governments of these countries are so weak that eventually they go by the dictates of multinational companies and the major powers that control the NSG itself, the US, France, Russia, China? Is it that these controllers have blocked the non-members from supplying uranium to us even as they themselves have blocked members of the NSG from supplying it? If that is indeed the case, how come we are putting so much faith in these very controllers as to place our future energy security in their hands?

That last question also arose in regard to what the prime minister said when he charged Yashwant Sinha with spreading falsehoods. Yashwant Sinha was asking why the deal with the Russians for four additional reactors had not been signed during the PM’s recent visit to Moscow. Was it under US pressure? The PM said that “it had always been understood” that this agreement would be signed only after restrictions had been lifted by the NSG. That was certainly not the impression he gave in the written statement that he read out during the joint press conference that he held with President Putin in New Delhi on January 25, 2007. In that statement he thanked President Putin for the help that Russia had given in ending the international restrictions that had been placed on imports of nuclear materials by India. He pointed to the memorandum of intent that had been signed by India and Russia for the construction of four new reactors at Kudankulam. There was not the shadow of a hint that further progress was contingent on anything that was to be done by the very countries that had imposed those international restrictions. And now, suddenly, “it was always understood...”

‘Why don’t you believe the CEO of America instead of some undersecretary?’

The Americans have been absolutely candid in what they intend to accomplish through the nuclear deal. To halt, roll back, and eventually eliminate India’s nuclear capability. To draw India into the non-proliferation regime. To have it sign up on other international protocols that the US, etc are crafting — the FMCT, the PSI, the Wassener Agreement... To make its energy supplies so dependent on imported uranium, imported reactors, that it would ‘on its own’ desist from testing. Provision upon provision of the Hyde Act speaks to this design explicitly. Statements upon statements of US Congressmen, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns and others testify to it.

Each time these have been cited by persons like me, government spokesmen have said, “But why relying on what some undersecretary has said? Why don’t you believe what the CEO of America, President Bush himself said when he signed the Hyde Act into law — that he would not be bound by the provisions? Did he not say that he would treat these as ‘advisory’ — that is, they shall be non-binding — and go by his own assessment?”

It just so happened that the very morning when the debate was to take place in the Rajya Sabha in December last year, every Indian correspondent in Washington received the statement — in hard as well as soft copy — and was urged to creed it to India post haste. Jaswant Singh received it from a correspondent in Washington and gave me a copy. The use to which the government would put it, and the construction it would put on it, were obvious. So, during my speech, I mentioned the statement, and said that before the debate was done, government would be invoking it. Sure enough, the minister for external affairs didn’t just invoke the statement, he read into it exactly what I had said government would. Since then, he has himself invoked it twice in Parliament, and of course sundry government spokesmen have been touting it to insinuate that the Hyde provisions are not really going to apply.

That is typical of what the government has been doing, with full confidence that no one will read or remember the original. In fact, what President Bush said can provide no solace to anyone concerned with India’s options in regard to its strategic programme.

The statement had to do only with a long-drawn tug of war between the executive and legislative in the US over who has the final say on the country’s foreign policy. Sticking to the position he has taken in invading Iraq, Bush said that the conduct of foreign policy is the prerogative of the executive and so he would construe the provisions in the Hyde Act that had a bearing on foreign policy as advisory. That is little consolation for us — the provision that prescribes penalties which must befall India should it test, for instance, is NOT one of these provisions.

For the same reason, he said that the provision in the Hyde Act that lays down that should NSG guidelines prohibit the export of some item to India, the US too would desist from exporting that item to India, would entail that the conduct of US foreign policy would be ceded to some international body, and this the executive could not do under the US Constitution. What use is this assertion of presidential powers to us? The provision of concern to us is the opposite one — it is the direction to the president, repeated more than once, that when the US terminates nuclear exports to India, it shall ensure that no other member of the NSG steps in to provide those materials components, fuel, and so on to India.

The third point Bush made was about information the executive shall collect regarding India’s nuclear programme. He said, the executive would not automatically disclose all of it. Again, no help to us. He did not say that the US government shall not collect the enormous amount of information about every aspect of our nuclear programme that the Hyde Act requires it to collect — including information about every bit of uranium mined, milled, used, the power produced from it, and how much is left over for weapons, and so on. The fact is that parts of such information are collected through US intelligence agencies also. The executive does not automatically make it public. Often, it gives the information to committees of the Congress in closed hearings. How does that help us?

Nor is it that the statement does not in the least say what the government has been trying to make us believe it says. The farcical thing is that it is seeking to find solace in the fact that on provisions regarding foreign policy — say, Iran — Bush will go by his own assessment, and not be constrained by the US Congress!

And then there is the obvious point: the law is not what a president says at some signing ceremony, the law is what the US Congress has enacted. Clinton specifically set aside signing statements of President Reagan and President Bush Sr. Will the next president, or one twenty years down the line, go along with the Congress in regard to even these provisions regarding foreign policy or with Bush’s statement?

Obvious. And yet the fabrication. In the full confidence that no one will read the original — even when it is as brief as Bush’s statement is, just 15 lines! How disheartening that the confidence is all too often justified in regard to our media.

The moral is simple:

•Don’t run after secret documents;

•Just read the printed ones;

•But do read them;

•Governments will be brought to heel.

editor@expressindia.com

Necessity is the mother of fabrication too

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Cut through the hype on the Indo-US nuclear deal, and all you have is the possibility of a marginal contribution to our nuclear energy generation. For this, our strategic interest is being mortgaged in perpetuity

India’s uranium deposits are limited and of low grade,” Hindustan Times declared on December 12, 2006, in a large, prominently displayed, boxed item. “The uranium available today can fuel only 10,000 reactors...” Ten thousand reactors? The total number of commercial reactors in the entire world today is just four hundred and forty. With uranium enough for 10,000 reactors, are we short of ore?

In the same account, we were instructed that “the nuclear deal can save us from the increasing energy deficit by helping install up to 40,000 MW of new nuclear capacity by 2015.” Assuming reactors that generate 500 MW each — the size of our new experimental fast breeder reactor, double the size of several of our current reactors — that would mean eighty new reactors being commissioned in the next eight years: that is, one new reactor coming into operation every five weeks.

The account proceeded to declare that India’s “nuclear electricity capacity” shall “see a 10-fold increase” by 2020. The account noted that at present we are producing 3,310 MW electricity from our nuclear plants. The paper’s forecast would, therefore, mean that electricity generation from our nuclear plants will increase to 33,100 MW by 2020. Assuming a plant-load factor of even 80 per cent — a third higher than the one at which our plants are working today — to generate this quantum of electricity, would entail setting up a capacity for over 40,000 MW. Even in its most optimistic forecasts — and we will have occasion to learn a bit about these soon enough — the Department of Atomic Energy has been putting the figure at half that level!

But that was not the end. Polishing up the deal further, the Hindustan Times informed its readers that by 2050, an astronomical “200,000 MW of nuclear energy can be produced”. We would presumably have more reactors by then than the whole world has today. As my friend T.C.A. Rangachari once said, “Jo hyper-bole so nihal.”

This has been one of the main strengths of the government over the past two years — the utter innumeracy of our media exceeded only by its utter willingness to put out anything. “Killer amendments dropped, India’s concerns taken care of,” the papers proclaimed — when, in fact, as even the most cursory glance would have shown, each and every one of the clauses was very much a part of the Act. “Objectionable clauses non-binding,” they proclaimed — when, in fact, neither our government nor that of the US was able to furnish any list of which clauses were binding and which were non-binding, and, of course, the Act itself made no such distinction.

But the enthusiasts had a ready reason for not studying the Act! “Laden with numbing bureaucratese and legalese,” The Times of India declared on its front page, in its — what else should one call it? — “analytical report” of the Hyde Act on December 9, 2006, “littered with sections, sub-sections, clauses, sub-clauses and footnotes, it has enough statements, caveats and requirements to make heads spin”.

How much easier then to just concoct! For it isn’t the precise figure that propagandists count on remaining in the mind, nor the precise assertion but the general impression — in this case, that the nuclear deal will light up the bulbs, that the concerns which had been expressed have been met. How much easier to abuse: those who were pointing to the provisions of the US legislation were charged with being “obsessed with clauses and sub-clauses”, to be “anti-deal jihadis”. And to put out stories, ‘Advani softens’ ‘Rajnath says if concerns met...’ I had attended every single meeting of the BJP leaders at which the nuclear deal was deliberated upon. At no meeting at all had the leaders felt that either new evidence or new argument had surfaced which required that the assessment be changed. And yet, ‘BJP softens...’ And this after written statements were put out repeatedly over the signatures of the principal leaders themselves.

The press, of course, has been the instrument in all this — that itself is as deplorable as it is worrisome. The wielder of the instrument has been the government. And its fabrications can fill a volume.

The myth of power

As the desperation to justify the deal has swelled, in the government’s reckoning the contribution that nuclear power can make to our energy needs has swelled!

In the Approach paper to the 11th Five Year Plan, which was put out with the usual fanfare in December 2006, the word ‘nuclear’ occurs just twice. The first time is in the context of housing: we are instructed that, along with growing numbers, nuclear families are creating the need for more housing. The second time it occurs is just to state that policies must be evolved to ensure swift completion of hydro and nuclear projects.

But by the time we get to the Report of the Working Group on Power for Eleventh Plan (2007-12), which was put out in February 2007, imagineering takes over the Planning Commission and its experts. The report notes that nuclear capacity at the end of the 10th Plan is liable to be 3900 MW. Reviewing the projects that can be completed in the 11th Plan, the report concludes that capacity addition during the 11th Plan (that is, by 2012) shall be 3160 MW. And then comes a sudden leap: the report says that during the 12th Plan (that is, between 2012 and 2019), 13,500 MW of capacity shall be added.

Pause for a moment and ask, how has this figure — of 13,500 MW — been arrived at? One explanation is, of course, generic: the more distant the date for which you are putting out a figure, the more daring you can afford to be! The second is specific to the figure. You see, when asked what it can aim at for 2020, the Department of Atomic Energy has been in the habit of saying, almost as a reflex, ‘20,000 MW’. Hence, the working group figure: our present capacity is for 3900 MW; add to that what can be constructed at best during the 11th Plan: that makes, 3900 MW plus 3160 MW, that is 7060 MW. To jack the figure up to 20,000 MW by 2020, 13,000 MW or so will have to be added in the 12th Plan. So, that is what we will declare as added! QED!

But assume this sudden leap is executed in the 12th Plan. Another document tells the tale the government has conjured up because of the deal. This government’s main study on the energy sector has been the report of another committee set up under the overall rubric of that habitual legitimiser, the Planning Commission. The committee had the usual stellar cast. Its report is entitled Integrated Energy Policy and was put out by the Planning Commission in August 2006. At page 37, in Table 3.4, the report gives two sets of possible figures for installed capacity of nuclear power — a set for a ‘pessimistic scenario’ and another set for an ‘optimistic scenario’. The capacity for 2020 in the former is put near the usual DAE figure, 21,000 MW. Under the ‘optimistic scenario’, it is put at 29,000 MW — far higher, you will recall, than even the working group figure, but still not so high as to sell the deal. To locate the sabz bagh in the name of which the government has been marketing the deal, you have to look at the figures for 2030: 48,000 MW in the ‘pessimistic scenario’ and 63000 MW in the ‘optimistic scenario’.

That the credulity of even the authors of the report was being strained is obvious from the note they add to this table. They record, “These estimates assume that:

•“the FBR (Fast Breeder Reactor) technology is successfully demonstrated by the 500 MW PFBR (Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor) currently under construction,

•“new uranium mines are opened for providing fuel for setting up additional PHWRs (Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors),

•“India succeeds in assimilating the LWR (Light Water Reactor) technology through import and develops the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor for utilising Thorium by 2020.”

Anyone who has the least familiarity with what the Times of India would have called ‘bureaucratese’ will see through to the extreme skepticism that the authors — heavily pressurised reactors, if I may say so — are trying to convey. By the time three pages have passed, the pressure has taken the better of the reactors: in listing “some energy supply scenarios for 8 per cent GDP growth”, they go for “maximum nuclear”, which they say “assumes nuclear development as per the optimistic scenario of Table 3.4.” The “pessimistic scenario”? Press “Del” for delete!

That apart, what would we have to do to get from 20,000 MW in 2020 to 63,000 MW by 2030 — that is, how do we add 43,000 MW in 10 years? If we put up 500 MW reactors, that will require that we put up over 80 reactors in 120 months: that is, we bring into operation one reactor every one and a half months; if we put up 1000 MW reactors, that will require over 40 reactors — that is, we bring into operation one reactor every three months.

But take one more leap of faith.

Assume that the reactors are set up at this pace. What do we get at the end?

The report states, “Even if a 20-fold increase takes place in India’s nuclear capacity by 2031-32, the contribution of India’s nuclear power capacity to India’s energy mix is also, at best, expected to be 4.0 to 6.4 per cent.” (Integrated Energy Policy, Volume I, xxii.)

Notice what the experts are saying:

•Even if —

•There is a twenty-fold increase

•The contribution to capacity — not to actual generation

•Shall at best be....

For this marginal contribution, indeed for the possibility of this marginal contribution, our strategic interest is being mortgaged in perpetuity.

While the government peddles the deal as the magic lamp that will, as the papers have been putting it, “end the nuclear winter”, which will open “the nuclear trove”; while the government peddles the deal as the master-stroke that will ensure “energy security”, the government’s principal document on energy acknowledges the obvious: “If the sanctions by the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) are removed and India is able to import uranium and nuclear power plants, nuclear power can play a much bigger role in the power sector. The capacity growth then would not be constrained by Table 3.4. However, if energy security concerns are our primary driver towards nuclear (sic), then imports of LWRs (Light Water Reactors), even though more economical, may have to be limited to restrict our dependence on energy imports.” (Integrated Energy Policy, p. 48.)

Alternatives

Contrast this contribution with just three of the many alternatives that are available. Citing an Asian Development Bank study, Integrated Energy Policy states (on p. 81) that demand-side management has the potential for affecting a peak saving of “at least 15 per cent of total generation”. The report lists several methods by which these “megawatts” may be secured — every megawatt saved is a megawatt generated. In fact, I am instructed by Commission staff themselves, this is the order of saving that comes about merely from the adoption of more efficient end-use appliances. The correct figure of this potential is not 15 per cent but 19 per cent to 22 per cent: this is the difference between the efficient and inefficient energy scenarios projected on pages 48-49 of the report.

Consider a second alternative. The working group on power itself indicated that the potential of hydro power in just our northeastern states is 58,000 MW.

Add to this what can be secured through partnering with Nepal. The current cost of a reactor — a cost that is bound to leap higher, as we shall see — is around $2.5 billion per reactor. For generating the 35,000 MW that the government’s representatives had mentioned in Parliament, we will have to spend $91 billion. For those mythical 63,000 MW, mentioned by the Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy, we will have to spend $158 billion. Now, the total budget of the government of Nepal is about $1.6 billion. You could offer to defray the entire budget of the Nepalese government for 60 to 100 years, and invite it to together build a string of hydro power projects with money raised from the market, and you will still come out better: you would have got power from a perennial, renewable source; you would have alleviated the problem of floods in UP, Bihar and the rest; you would have converted a neighbour into a friend.

But that is just half the story.

‘Strategic partnership’ without a strategy

Arun Shourie: Sunday, August 19, 2007

123 PACT:a It is not the way to energy security; the way to that is to develop our own hydroelectric resources, to redouble our uranium mining, to redouble our work on fast-breeder reactors, on thorium

The one point on which there seems to be an advance is in regard to reprocessing spent fuel—alas, that too comes with caveats. The US has given us consent to process this in a dedicated facility that we are to set up, and which is to be under IAEA safeguards. But the same Article that grants us this consent provides that “the Parties will agree on arrangements and procedures under which such reprocessing or other alteration in form or content will take place in this new facility”.

The steps that this latter bit shall entail have been spelled out by Nicholas Burns—both during his briefing to the press on 27 July 2007, and during his interaction with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his briefing of the press on 27 July, 2007, Burns said, “Both of us—the United States and India—have granted each other consent to reprocess spent fuel”—that genuflection is nothing but a gesture to enable our Government to maintain that we have fulfilled the PM’s ‘principle of reciprocity’—the US has been reprocessing spent fuel without our consent for decades! “To bring this reprocessing into effect requires that India would first establish a new national facility under IAEA safeguards dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material. Our two countries will also subsequently agree on a set of arrangements and procedures under which reprocessing will take place. And for those of you who are steeped in this, you know that that’s called for by Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.”

In his interaction with the Council on Foreign Relations, he again pointed out that “US law states that while we can promise reprocessing consent rights, we have to negotiate a subsequent agreement. We will do that and Congress will have the right to review that agreement”.

That is, we will set up a dedicated facility under IAEA safeguards. Arrangements and procedures for using it will have to be agreed upon with the US which shall be bound by its national laws, policies, licence requirements. This new agreement, when it is made, shall be submitted to the US Congress for approval. Hence, while here we have a step forward, we have to see where it lands us by the time the sequence is completed even in regard to this one step.

The rationalisation

The rationalisation for the deal that as typical as it would be consequential if only it were true was first put out in the initial stages by K. Subramaniam. He wrote, “Given India’s uranium ore crunch and the need to build up our minimum credible nuclear arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India’s advantage to categorise as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refuelled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons-grade plutonium production.”

Such rationalisations became an inconvenience for those who were lobbying for the deal in Washington: see, Senators like Senator Dorgan pointed out, Indians will use what they get from us to increase their weapons arsenal. Little was left of it after the Hyde Act was passed--the possibility was firmly scotched. And, therefore, I was doubly surprised to hear the rationalisation in a briefing from one of the highest persons: this Agreement, he emphasised more than once, gives ‘greater manoeuverability’ in regard to our weapons programme: we can use the imported uranium for electricity generation; this will leave our own uranium entirely free for our weapons programme.

What an—given the eminence of the person concerned, how should I put it?—innocent ruse! In fact, the Hyde Act specifically and emphatically directs US Executive to scotch this prospect.

It states explicitly that non-proliferation of nuclear weapons remains the vital objective, and that for this purpose, capping, rolling back, and eventually eliminating our nuclear weapons capability is the instrument. The idea of the exercise is to put heavy economic incentives in the country’s way so that, as Section 102(6)c puts it, India will “refrain from actions that would further the development of its nuclear weapons program”. The next Section begins by stating that the policy of the US is to “Oppose the development of a capability to produce nuclear weapons by any non-nuclear weapon state, within or outside of the NPT”; in South Asia to “Achieve, at the earliest possible date, a moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes by India, Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of China”—China, not being part of South Asia, had surely been thrown in just for cosmetic effect; to “halt the increase of nuclear weapon arsenals in South Asia and to promote their reduction and eventual elimination”; furthermore, “Pending implementation of the multilateral moratorium, or the treaty, encourage India not to increase its production of fissile material at unsafeguarded nuclear facilities”. Towards these ends, Section 104c(2)(D) requires the President to provide “(D) A description of the steps that India is taking to work with the United States for the conclusion of a multilateral treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, including a description of the steps that the United States has taken and will take to encourage India to identify and declare a date by which India would be willing to stop production of fissile material for nuclear weapons unilaterally or pursuant to a multilateral moratorium or treaty”.

These requirements are reinforced in the Section by binding the President to ensure that, in accordance with obligations of the US under the NPT, the US does nothing in cooperating with “a country that is not a nuclear-weapon State Party to the NPT that would in any way assist, encourage, or induce that country to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices”.

Accordingly, the US President must provide the US Congress—(F) an analysis of whether United States civil nuclear cooperation with India is in any way assisting India’s nuclear weapons program, including through—

(i) the use of any United States equipment, technology, or nuclear material by India in an unsafeguarded nuclear facility or nuclear-weapons related complex;

(ii) the replication and subsequent use of any United States technology by India in an unsafeguarded nuclear facility or unsafeguarded nuclear weapons-related complex, or for any activity related to the research, development, testing, or manufacture of nuclear explosive devices; and

(iii) the provision of nuclear fuel in such a manner as to facilitate the increased production by India of highly enriched uranium or plutonium in unsafeguarded nuclear facilities;

(G) a detailed description of—

(i) United States efforts to promote national or regional progress by India and Pakistan in disclosing, securing, limiting, and reducing their fissile material stockpiles, including stockpiles for military purposes, pending creation of a worldwide fissile material cut-off regime, including the institution of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty;

(ii) the responses of India and Pakistan to such efforts.

Where is the scope for that ‘greater manoeuverability’ which our educators at the highest level tried to inveigle us into believing?

Won’t let American inspectors roam around

Persons like me had drawn attention to the fact that, under what was being agreed to, we would have to accept not just IAEA safeguards and inspections, but, in addition, inspections by teams of US inspectors. American Congressmen as well as officials like the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had been completely candid about this: we will ensure ‘fall-back’ safeguards, they declared time and again. I cited these declarations in the Rajya Sabha.

The Prime Minister was emphatic. He said, “There is no question of India signing either a Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA or an Additional Protocol of a type concluded by Non Nuclear Weapon States who have signed the NPT. We will not accept any verification measures regarding our safeguarded nuclear facilities beyond those contained in an India-Specific Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. Therefore there is no question of allowing American inspectors to roam around our nuclear facilities.”

That last bit, “Therefore there is no question of allowing American inspectors to roam around our nuclear facilities,” drew loud applause from Government benches. Encouraged, the Prime Minister repeated this determination on more than one occasion.

That was in August 2006. Come December, and in Section 104 (B)(5)(A)(III), the US Congress provided:

“(iii) In the event the IAEA is unable to implement safeguards as required by an agreement for cooperation arranged pursuant to Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2153), appropriate assurance that arrangements will be put in place expeditiously that are consistent with the requirements of section 123 a.(1) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 2153(a)(1)) regarding the maintenance of safeguards as set forth in the agreement regardless of whether the agreement is terminated or suspended for any reason.”

Exactly the “fall-back safeguards” that they had declared they would ensure. And what does the 123 Agreement provide? Article 10(4) states, “If the IAEA decides that the application of IAEA safeguards is no longer possible, the supplier and recipient should consult and agree on appropriate verification measures.” This is to be read with Article 12(3) which states, “When execution of an agreement or contract pursuant to this Agreement between Indian and United States organisations requires exchanges of experts, the Parties shall facilitate entry of the experts to their territories and their stay therein consistent with national laws, regulations and practices. When other cooperation pursuant to this Agreement requires visits of experts, the Parties shall facilitate entry of the experts to their territory and their stay therein consistent with national laws, regulations and practices.” Inspectors become ‘experts’—and the assurance is fulfilled!

Even that is not the end of the matter. Article 16(3) provides, “Notwithstanding the termination or expiration of this Agreement or withdrawal of a Party from this Agreement, Articles 5.6(c), 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 15 shall continue in effect so long as any nuclear material, non-nuclear material, by-product material, equipment or components subject to these articles remains in the territory of the Party concerned or under its jurisdiction or control anywhere, or until such time as the Parties agree that such nuclear material is no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards.”

Thus, if even a little bit of the equipment, material, etc. are left behind, not just IAEA safeguards but in addition the right of the US to act on the fallback safeguards shall continue. It shall continue even if the 123 Agreement itself expires. It shall continue even if India withdraws from the Agreement. Read again the words with which this Article opens: “Notwithstanding the termination or expiration of this Agreement or withdrawal of a Party from this Agreement.”

And yet the Prime Minister says in his new statement, “There is no change in our position that we would accept only IAEA safeguards on our civilian nuclear facilities.”

And do you recall what is provided in that other 123 Agreement—between US and China? “Noting that such cooperation is between two Nuclear Weapon States”, the Agreement begins, and again in Article 8(2), “The parties recognise that this cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy is between two Nuclear Weapon States and that bilateral safeguards are NOT required.”

That is why the Government was so wrong in trying to scoff away our pointing to the insistence with which US spokesmen were declaring that India was NOT being recognised as a Nuclear Weapon State: its spokesmen insinuated time and again that we seemed to be stuck on a question of prestige! The fact was, and is that American insistence on this matter was directed at achieving vital practical consequences. The consequences are now upon us. And the Government is left redoubling its untruths.

Conclusion

On every other matter—testing; the effects on our strategic programme; ‘India specific safeguards’—the PM has repeated the assertions he has advanced in the past. They remain as misleading. The deal is not the way to energy security—the way to that is to develop our own hydroelectric resources, to redouble our uranium mining, to redouble our work on fast-breeder reactors, on thorium.

To make this deal the fulcrum of closer Indo-American relations too is a blunder. And the reason the Government has blundered is manifest: it has got swept off—should that be ‘flattered off’—its feet by talk of ‘strategic partnership’ without having a strategy. By the time the consequences of its details became evident, the deal had become a matter of ego and prestige. Hence, this uncharacteristic tenacity.

(Concluded)

Forward-looking farce

Arun Shourie: Saturday, August 18, 2007

123 Pact: Deal binds India to Hyde Act whose main objective is to ‘halt, roll back and eventually eliminate’ India’s nuclear capability

On March 7, 2007, while introducing the Separation Plan, the prime minister told Parliament that the US had assured India that we would have access to uninterrupted supplies of fuel throughout the lifetime of the reactors that we would place under safeguards — both from the US and from other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Elaborating on this assurance — the absolutely critical assurance on the basis of which the government justified placing two-thirds of our reactors under safeguards at the very beginning — the prime minister said: “To further guard against any disruption of fuel supplies for India, the United States is prepared to take other additional steps, such as:

a) Incorporating assurances regarding fuel supply in a bilateral US-India agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which would be negotiated; b) The United States will join India in seeking to negotiate with the IAEA an India-specific fuel supply agreement; c) The United States will support an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors, and; d) If despite these arrangements, a disruption of fuel supplies to India occurs, the United States and India would jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include countries such as Russia, France and the United Kingdom to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supply to India.”

Prime minister or no prime minister, our Parliament or no Parliament, the US Congress completely stamped out this string of assurances:

— It scotched the PM’s assurance about “strategic reserves” — reserves on which we could fall back in the event of not just normal disruption of market supplies, but sanctions — as happened in the case of Tarapur — by specifying in Section 103(b)(10): “Any nuclear power reactor fuel reserve provided to the government of India for use in safeguarded civilian nuclear facilities should be commensurate with reasonable reactor operating requirements”.

• As for the PM’s assurance about joining India in convening a meeting of other suppliers to restore fuel supplies in the event of a disruption, the US Congress inserted not one, but five provisions in the Hyde Act to direct the US Government to ensure that, should the US stop supplies of fuel to India — for instance, in the event of India testing a nuclear device — no other member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) shall supply fuel to India.

To give just one string of examples, the US Congress enacted in the Hyde Act:

1. Section 102 (13): “The United States should NOT seek to facilitate or encourage the continuation of nuclear exports to India by any other party if such exports are terminated under United States law”

2. Section 103 (4): “Strengthen the NSG guidelines and decisions concerning consultation by members regarding violations of supplier and recipient understandings by instituting the practice of a timely and coordinated response by NSG members to all such violations, including termination of nuclear transfers to an involved recipient, that discourages individual NSG members from continuing cooperation with such recipient until such time as a consensus regarding a coordinated response has been achieved”

3. Section 103(6): “Seek to prevent the transfer to a country of nuclear equipment, materials, or technology from other participating governments in the NSG or from any other source if nuclear transfers to that country are suspended or terminated pursuant to this title, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 USC 2011 et seq.), or any other United States law”.

“Not seek to facilitate or encourage...,” ... “Institute the practice of a timely and coordinated response by NSG members...,”... “Seek to prevent...”. What could be more emphatic? What could be clearer? But our Micawbers kept us hoping: “Something will turn up. We are not bound by a US law. The assurances will be in the 123 Agreement. That is all we will be bound by.”

We now have the 123 Agreement. It shows in the clearest possible terms that the US government has not moved a millimetre from its position about granting access to no more than the fuel that is required for the “operating requirements” of the reactors. For what do we read in the 123 Agreement? Here is Article 5 (6) (B) of the Agreement. Please do read it to see how smoke is fed into our eyes by this government:

To further guard against any disruption of fuel supplies, the United States is prepared to take the following additional steps:

• “The United States is willing to incorporate assurances regarding fuel supply in the bilateral US-India agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, which would be submitted to the US Congress.”

But this is the 123 Agreement! In which future 123 Agreement will the US incorporate that assurance?

The Article continues:

• “The United States will join India in seeking to negotiate with the IAEA an India-specific fuel supply agreement.”

• “The United States will support an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India’s reactors”

• “If despite these arrangements, a disruption of fuel supplies to India occurs, the United States and India would jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include countries such as Russia, France and the United Kingdom to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supply to India.”

To enable the Indian government to save face, the words have just been cut and pasted. And in his new statement to Parliament, the prime minister hails this as an achievement: “The Agreement reiterates in toto the corresponding portions of the Separation Plan,” he says. Right! What was to have been assured in the 123 Agreement has been left to be assured in the 123 Agreement!

The Americans have already nailed that particular claim. The chief negotiator for the US, Nicholas Burns, was asked this very question during his interaction with the Council on Foreign Relations on 2 August, 2007. He was asked, “Some say that under the deal, if India holds a nuclear weapons test, the US would delay its own nuclear fuel supplies to India but the US would help India find other sources of fuel, which violates the spirit of the Hyde Act. What do you say to those concerns?” And he answered, “That’s absolutely false. I negotiated the agreement and we preserved intact the responsibility of the President under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that if India or any other country conducts a nuclear test, the President — he or she at that time in the future — will have the right to ask for the return of the nuclear fuel or nuclear technologies that have been transferred by American firms. That right is preserved wholly in the agreement.”

So, we remain at what the Hyde Act provides, “operating requirements”, and some assistance against “market disruptions”. And that too to be enshrined in some future 123 Agreement. But on the basis of such postponement, the prime minister claims, “Hon’ble Members will agree that these provisions will ensure that there is no repeat of our unfortunate experience with Tarapur.”

A very sad affair

There is just no end to such subterfuges — and that they should have been put out by the very person with whom the country associates honesty, makes it all a very sad affair.

“This Agreement further confirms that US cooperation with India is a permanent one,” the prime minister says in his new statement. “There is no provision that states that US cooperation with India will be subject to an annual certification process.”

How many times will such dissimulations be repeated? There is no provision in the 123 Agreement because there is no need for any provision in this Agreement. The Agreement is the first step in operationalising the Hyde Act. It clearly states that US actions under it shall be governed by the national laws of the US — among these is the Hyde Act. That Act sets out a long, long list of reports that the US president must submit to Congress — every year, and in addition as soon as material information becomes available. On the basis of such information and in accordance with the reports, the president must certify to Congress that India is fully complying with provisions and goals of the Hyde Act and other US laws. If he is unable to do so, the “cooperation” must cease forthwith.

Nor is this an idle apprehension. To give just one example, the 123 Agreement between US and China was signed in 1985. It could not be operationalised for thirteen years because the American president could not submit the certifications that were required.

And that is when there was no, and is no China-specific law — as there is the Hyde Act in our case.

Singular objective

The items on which the US president must report to the Congress have nothing to do with energy. They have one object and one alone: to see that this deal is not directly or indirectly helping India thwart the central goal of the Hyde Act — namely, as the Act puts it, to “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” India’s nuclear capability.

A score of examples can be given. One will suffice — to show how those reporting and certification requirements have indeed been built into the 123 Agreement.

The Hyde Act provides that the US president must furnish detailed reports to the US Congress on, among a host of other things, uranium that India has mined, obtained, used, has in stock, and so on. It does so as part of the measures that it specifies to ensure that the “civil nuclear cooperation” is not indirectly helping India enhance its weapons capability.

Section 104(5)(g) of the Act lays down that the US president furnish “fully and currently” — that is, he must not wait for the mandatory end-of-the-year reporting — detailed reports on:

• An estimate of a) the amount of uranium mined and milled in India during the previous year; b) the amount of such uranium that has likely been used or allocated for the production of nuclear explosive devices and; c) the rate of production in India of fissile material for nuclear explosive devices and nuclear explosive devices;

• An analysis as to whether imported uranium has affected the rate of production in India of nuclear explosive devices.

Not only is it the case that, irrespective of the 123 Agreement, the US president has to compulsorily satisfy Congress that the Indo-US deal is not enabling India enhance its nuclear capabilities in any way. The fact is that requirements about uranium, and so on are built into the 123 text directly. They stick out through the camouflage.

Article 10.7 of the Agreement: “Upon the request of either Party, the other Party shall report or permit the IAEA to report to the requesting Party on the status of all inventories of material subject to this Agreement.”

You realise the import of that requirement when you go back to the Article on “definitions”, Article 1. That Article specifies, among other things, what materials are “subject to this Agreement”. These include:

• “Low enriched uranium”, which means uranium enriched to less than twenty per cent in the isotope 235

• “Non-nuclear material”, which means heavy water, or any other material suitable for use in a reactor to slow down high velocity neutrons and increase the likelihood of further fission, as may be jointly designated by the appropriate authorities of the Parties

• “Nuclear material”, which means source material and special fissionable material.

• “Source material”, which means uranium containing the mixture of isotopes occurring in nature; uranium depleted in the isotope 235; thorium; any of the foregoing in the form of metal, alloy, chemical compound, or concentrate; any other material containing one or more of the foregoing in such concentration as the Board of Governors of the IAEA shall from time to time determine...

Each of these is a material subject to this Agreement. In regard to each of them, India will supply a comprehensive account of inventories.

And yet, the PM makes out as if the government has ensured some sort of dilution in the requirements that the Hyde Act has specified.

But that is the minor part — an entire tale of attempted deception hangs by it, something to which I shall now turn.

To be concluded

A word dropped, a word inserted and the assurances are fulfilled!

Arun Shourie: Friday, August 17, 2007

123 Agreement: Mind the gap between the PM’s assurances and the text of the deal

I had taken up with President Bush our concerns regarding provisions in the two bills,’ the prime minister’s website records Dr Manmohan Singh telling the nuclear scientists. ‘It is clear that if the final product is in its current form, India will have grave difficulties in accepting the bills. US has been left in no doubt as to our position.’

That was in August 2006, soon after his speech in the Rajya Sabha in which the prime minister had drawn the lakshman rekha below which India would not go in its negotiations on the nuclear deal.

When the US House of Representatives had passed its bill, and when the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions would jeopardise our strategic interests, we were all told, ‘But this is just the House Bill. Our concerns will be taken care of in the Senate bill.’ When the Senate passed its bill, and the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions made even deeper inroads into our strategic interests than the House version, we were all told, ‘But we have to wait for the Joint Conference of the two Houses to hammer out a final version. That will take care of our concerns.’ When the final version was passed, and the fact could no longer be denied that it had in it the harshest features of each version, we were all told, ‘But India is not bound by laws made by any other country. We have to wait for the 123 Agreement. That will take care of our concerns.’

We now have the 123 Agreement. It explicitly states in Article 2 that ‘Each Party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.’

In the case of the US, the relevant ‘national laws’ include the original Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nonproliferation Treaty Act, and the Hyde Act of December 2006.

To take just one example, the very Section of the 1954 Act under which the ‘123 Agreement’ is entered into — Section 123 — states that, should any nuclear device be detonated for any reason whatsoever, not only shall all nuclear commerce be halted with the country, the US shall have the right to demand the return of ‘any nuclear materials and equipment transferred pursuant’ to the agreement for cooperation as well as any ‘special nuclear material produced through the use thereof if the cooperating party detonates a nuclear explosive device.’ ‘For any reason whatsoever’, the Joint Conference of the two Houses made explicit, shall also include ‘for peaceful purposes’ — the ground we had invoked for the 1974 test! This provision is re-emphasised in the Hyde Act. Section 106 of the latter states explicitly, ‘A determination and any waiver under section 104 shall cease to be effective if the President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this Act.’

As for ‘applicable treaties’ the US Act to operationalise the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty binds the US not to directly or indirectly — and we shall soon see the significance of these two words, ‘or indirectly’ — assist any Non-nuclear Weapon State to acquire or manufacture nuclear weapons. That in devising its cooperation with India the US must adhere to its obligations under this Article is reiterated and emphasised in the Hyde Act. That is why Section 104 of the Hyde Act explicitly states, ‘Pursuant to the obligations of the United States under Article I of the NPT, nothing in this title constitutes authority to carry out any civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and a country that is not a nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT that would in any way assist, encourage, or induce that country to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices...’

That is just one example of what that reference to ‘national laws’ entails. As is well known by now, the US Congress completely disregarded the assurances that our prime minister had given to Parliament and incorporated a slew of provisions that were even more stringent, even more intrusive than the provisions of the original bills which the prime minister had said India would have ‘grave difficulties’ in accepting.

So, what does the prime minister do now — especially in view of the fact that the 123 Agreement explicitly mandates that, in implementing it, the US shall be bound by these laws? Simple: in the long statement that he waded through on August 13, 2007, in Parliament, the prime minister just doesn’t mention any national law at all, not the Hyde nor any other Act!

Omission actually is deployed more than once as the device of choice.

‘All’ out, ‘associated’ inserted

The central imperative in our discussions with the United States on Civil Nuclear Cooperation is to ensure the complete and irreversible removal of existing restrictions imposed on India through iniquitous restrictive trading regimes over the years. We seek the removal of restrictions on all aspects of cooperation and technology transfers pertaining to civil nuclear energy — ranging from nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, to re-processing spent fuel, i.e. all aspects of a complete nuclear fuel cycle.’ The ‘complete and irreversible removal’ is just as important. But for the moment I am on the ‘all’ — in giving this assurance to Parliament, the prime minister used the word not once but twice.

In fact, a little later in his speech, he assured Parliament a third, and a then fourth time, ‘We seek the removal of restrictions on all aspects of cooperation and technology transfers pertaining to civil nuclear energy — ranging from supply of nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, reprocessing spent fuel, i.e., all aspects of complete nuclear fuel supply. Only such cooperation would be in keeping with the July Joint Statement.’

Persons like me pointed out that the ‘full cooperation’ the US would enter into could not but be ‘less than full’. The reason was simple: US authorities — including President Bush — have stated time and again that as reprocessing, enrichment and heavy water have to do with producing nuclear weapons, and not with meeting energy requirements, the US shall not transfer technologies, materials or equipment related to these three vital aspects. Sponsors of the Hyde Act, that is the ones on whom India was relying to see the legislation through Congress, themselves emphasised this in their speeches on the floor and in the Joint Explanatory Statement that they submitted while forwarding the reconciled bill to the two Houses.

And throughout the negotiations for the 123 Agreement, the US Government stuck to this stand. But how to save the Indian Government’s face? Through what our prime minister in his statement of August 13, 2007, calls, ‘forward looking language’! Article 5(2) of the 123 Agreement, which the prime minister claims as an achievement, is the result. It provides, ‘Sensitive nuclear technology, heavy water production technology, sensitive nuclear facilities, heavy water production facilities and major critical components of such facilities may be transferred under this Agreement pursuant to an amendment to this Agreement. Transfers of dual-use items that could be used in enrichment, reprocessing or heavy water production facilities will be subject to the Parties’ respective applicable laws, regulations and license policies.’

Notice the two conditions: (1) ‘pursuant to an amendment to this Agreement’; and (2) ‘subject to the Parties’ respective applicable laws, regulations and license policies.’ And then too, ‘may be transferred’. When the Agreement which has not even become effective will be amended, no one knows! And how it will be amended when the ‘applicable laws, regulations and license policies’ of the US explicitly prohibit such transfers, no one knows! But the ‘forward look’ zindabad!

But what about that four-times repeated assurance to Parliament? The prime minister’s new statement, the one of August 13, 2007, deploys an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution. ‘The concept of full nuclear cooperation has been clearly enshrined in this Agreement,’ the PM’s new statement reads. ‘The Agreement stipulates that such cooperation will include nuclear reactors and aspects of the associated nuclear fuel cycle, including technology transfer on industrial or commercial scale.’

Please read that again. Did you spot the word that is suddenly missing? ‘All aspects’ has suddenly become ‘aspects’! And ‘all aspects of the fuel cycle’ has become ‘aspects of the associated nuclear fuel cycle’ — that is, aspects associated with reactors that the US will supply: a manual describing safety procedures, for instance!

‘All’ dropped. ‘Associated’ inserted. Assurances fulfilled. And Parliament can go jump out of the box!

What the PM does not refer to

This is not the first time that we have had a 123 Agreement with the US. We had one for Tarapur also. The US signed that Agreement with us in 1963. It was to be effective for 30 years, till 1993. That Agreement provided that the US would give fuel for Tarapur as needed by India. It provided that the US would have the first right to spent fuel in excess of India’s needs for peaceful nuclear energy. And even for this part, just the first right. If it did not take back the fuel, we would have the right to reprocess it. There were no conditions. In testimony to the US Congress, US officials have themselves acknowledged that the US is not to this day sure that India violated any term of the 1963 Agreement. Yet, the US terminated all fuel supplies in 1974, saying that India had violated domestic US laws. Pressed about the laws, the US maintained that India had violated the intent of US domestic laws! For decades, it has consistently refused to either take back spent fuel or let us reprocess it. All this happened, even when there was no Hyde Act — no India-specific law — to govern that Agreement.

That is why the provision in the new 123 Agreement that, in implementing it, a party — the US in this case — shall be governed by, inter alia, its national laws becomes all important. And that is why the prime minister’s decision not to let any reference to this provision slip at all into his lengthy statement is so telling of this new culture — of spin; of the half-truth. Nor do we have to wait for the laws that the US may pass in the future. The three laws that are already on their statute books — the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nonproliferation Act, and the Hyde Act — are sufficient to keep India on the shortest possible leash.

To gauge the difference, contrast the provision in the 123 Agreement that the US signed with China in 1985. Article 2(1) of that Agreement specifies: ‘Each party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes’ — so far, almost the same as the Indo-US text. But then comes the vital sentence which is missing from the Indo-US agreement: ‘The parties recognise, with respect to the observance of this Agreement, the principle of international law that provides that a party may NOT invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.’

That provision shields China from the Tarapur-treatment. The text in the Indo-US 123 Agreement opens us to a repeat of that treatment — on an even longer list of ‘grounds’ than could be envisaged at the time of Tarapur, and at a time in future when, if the PM’s dreams are realised, we will be even less able to resist pressures than we were in the past — for we will be dependent on imported nuclear fuel for 35,000 megawatts of electricity and not just, as in the case of Tarapur, for just 300 megawatts.

To be continued

The way out

Arun Shourie: Saturday, December 23, 2006

Looking at atomic power as the major component of our electricity supplies in the future has been India’s basic strategic flaw. As far as nuclear reactors are concerned, look to them principally for our weapons programme, not for electricity — for we do have other ways of securing electricity

But the Vajpayee government itself started the discussions for this deal,” the government’s apologists shout. Would the fact that Vajpayee’s government recommenced discussions with China on the border justify surrendering Arunachal to China tomorrow?

“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.”

Since the Act was passed, we have witnessed lobbying more blatant than anything I have seen in the 35 years that I have followed Indian public affairs, the twisting and misrepresentation more shameless than I have seen. This feverish activity itself betrays that we should look closely at what is being done.

The way out

Yes, energy is an important objective. Yes, good relations with the US are important. One possible source was cooperation with the US in this field. But that cooperation, evidently, comes with an unacceptable price tag. Stop looking to this deal as the key to better Indo-American relations. Stop looking to Americans for nuclear energy. Stop looking to nuclear energy as a significant component of our electricity supplies.

This last factor — looking to atomic power as a major component of our electricity supplies in the future — has been the strategic flaw which has landed us in this quicksand. The sequence of the government’s reasoning has been:

• We need huge quantities of energy.

• Nuclear energy has to supply 35,000 megawatts of what we need — against the 3,500 megawatts it supplies today.

• While we have the requisite reserves of natural uranium, we are not able to get enough of it out of the ground for the reactors.

• Hence, the operating/plant-load factors of all the reactors have been falling since 2000. Therefore, we need imported uranium.

• Therefore, we need this agreement.

• Therefore, we have to accept the conditions that go with this agreement.

Now, it is true that with the quantities of uranium that we are currently mining and milling, we cannot pursue both — that order of power generation as well as our weapons programme — simultaneously. If for electricity one uses X amount of uranium, I was instructed, for weapons, one needs 7X. That is why we have had to come to two decisions:

• Limit the weapons programme.

• Go in for imported uranium fuel — whatever the conditions attached to securing it.

The way out is six-fold

First, as far as nuclear reactors are concerned, look to them principally for our weapons programme, not for electricity — for we do have other ways of securing electricity, but we do not have other routes to nuclear weapons.

Second, for energy look to other clean sources. For instance, clean coal; methane through coal; most important, hydroelectric power. I remember studies that have been done about the enormous potential for the latter in just the Northeast. The 5-6 stage Dihang-Subhansiri project itself has the capacity to generate 22,000 megawatts. NHPC is now executing one part of it, and this alone will generate close to 2,000 megawatts. I remember how for a decade the Dibang project had been languishing with the Brahmaputra Board; that board was almost comatose, in any event it did not have in its charter the authority to raise money for projects; we strove to get it transferred to NHPC; NHPC is now executing the project; even this project has the capacity to generate 3,800 megawatts... This is the route to energy self-sufficiency, to energy security. We have the technology. We can fabricate the turbines and ancillary equipment right here. The projects will generate jobs in the numbers that we need.

Third, intensify uranium mining and milling. A myth has been spread by interested parties as well as by those who have not been able to get the irritants out of the way, that we do not have adequate natural uranium. A good corrective to such propaganda is an excellent study done by none other than Ashley Tellis, one of the architects of this very nuclear deal, and one of its most persuasive advocates.

Entitled Atoms for War? it shows that we have much more than enough of uranium. (The study can be downloaded from www.carnegieendowment.org/publications). Tellis notes that India is widely acknowledged to have reserves of 78,000 metric tons of uranium — some estimates put the figure higher. Using the most optimistic plant-load factors, he calculates that all the reactors currently in operation as well as those that are under construction and the weapons programme over the entire lifetime of these plants will require 14,640 to 14,790 metric tons of uranium. He shows, next, that if the eight reactors that India has declared it will use for military purposes were to allocate a quarter of their cores for the production of weapons-grade material, the total amount of natural uranium that would be needed to run these facilities for the remaining duration of their lives would be between 19,965 to 29,124 tons. Finally, the fuel required to run over their entire life cycle the two research reactors that are used for producing weapons-grade plutonium will be 938 to 1,088 tons. The two last steps would yield India 12,135 to 13,370 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium. This would be sufficient to increase our arsenal by 2,023 to 2,228 nuclear weapons. The total uranium required to run over their entire lifetime all these facilities, would thus use up just a third to one-half of the uranium deposits that are already known to exist.

Tellis writes that the present shortage of uranium is “a temporary aberration”, caused by impediments, removing which is within our capacity. Getting the courts, tribal leaders, activists to see reason. Firming up our land acquisition procedures. These are the sort of steps that are required. Is it not idiotic that we should close all options for the future; that we should mortgage our country’s security just because we cannot get around these self-created problems? Instead of going down on our knees for imported uranium, we should:

• Invest the amounts that are required for increased uranium mining and milling

• Solve land acquisition problems.

Fourth, we should spur DAE and AEA to be more focused. We should make them more accountable: if peer reviews are the way to spur them, government should institute such reviews.

Fifth, we must redouble research on the breeder programme. The key here is to have the reactors breed in a reasonable time — if the fuel is doubled in, say, five years, we can set up the second reactor in five years and we will have the fuel it needs; but if this doubling is going to take 30 years, we will have the fuel we need for it only 30 years from now. Kalpakkam notwithstanding, much work remains to be done. Once it is done, however, our reactors will be generating more fuel than they will be using, and we will be free of dependence altogether. That will be the time for looking to nuclear plants as a substantial source of electricity.

Finally, we are always being told that we have the largest reserves of thorium in the world. But it isn’t at all clear how far we are from the technologies that are needed for exploiting them. We need a new kind of robotics. We need automation that can withstand the enormously high temperatures that materials will attain.

In a word, instead of going on running after the Americans for reactors and fuel, these are the routes the government should set the country on.

(Concluded)