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US president's nuclear partnership to cap India's nuclear arm

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, Feb 21, IRNA
India-US-Nuclear
US President George W Bush has made it very clear that all "partners" under his new USD 250 million "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership" proposal will "have to agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons."
In return, the US will provide the countries "with small-scale reactors that will be secure and cost-effective."
"We will also ensure that these developing nations have a reliable nuclear fuel supply," President Bush said in a radio address to the American people made available here.

India and the US are working hard to salvage their civilian nuclear energy agreement although the absence of transparency is creating sufficient confusion within the strategic establishment not directly associated with the ongoing talks, a leading English daily, Asian Age, reported here today.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed on Monday at a joint press conference with French President Jacques Chirac that "all facilities procured by India through international cooperation on civilian nuclear energy will of course be subjected to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards," even as his aides spread the word that Washington was likely to agree to keeping the fast breeder reactor out of the civilian list of nuclear facilities for a few more years.

US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has now announced that he will be flying to Delhi to discuss the deal as "90 percent" of the work has been done and just "10 percent remains."
This was so even after the nuclear agreement has been opposed on different counts by the Department of Atomic Energy, the BJP and the Left parties with Prime Minister Singh and his aides, however, insistent that the nuclear agreement would go through.

The separation plans remain a closely guarded secret, with the government undecided whether Prime Minister Singh will make a statement in Parliament on the subject before or after the visit of President Bush. Prime Minister Singh did not give a categorical date to the Council of Ministers at the recent meeting convened by him here.

President Bush, in his radio message on Saturday, was far more forthcoming and gave details of his proposal, for which he will be traveling to India to seek a firm agreement.

America, he announced, will work with nations that have advanced civilian nuclear energy programs such as France, Japan and Russia.

He said they will together "develop and deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear fuel" as these will produce more energy while "dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear byproducts that unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons." At the same time, President Bush said, the US will work with its partners in developing countries "to meet their growing energy needs" by providing them with secure and cost-effective, small-scale reactors and a regular fuel supply. And, "in exchange, these partners will agree to forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities for developing nuclear weapons."
He told the American nation that under his scheme the US would be in a position to "provide the cheap, safe and clean energy that growing economies need while reducing the risk of nuclear
proliferation."
The US president preceded those remarks with a strong pitch for nuclear power, pointing out that France has built 58 nuclear power plants and gets more than 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

"Yet here in America we have not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s," he said, pointing out that just last summer he had signed an energy legislation offering incentives to encourage the building of nuclear plants in the US and was optimistic that the construction of these new nuclear plants would start by the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, all-out efforts are on by the Manmohan Singh government to get the deal through during President Bush's visit, with Burns now expected to work on the "let us leave the fast breeder reactor out of the separation plans till 2010" proposal.

There is visible excitement in government circles now that Burns, who had made it clear that he would not visit New Delhi unless there was something concrete to discuss, had decided to come later this week for further discussions.

He has spoken of the need for "flexibility" on both sides and it remains to be seen now whether the one-page list initially submitted by the Department of Atomic Energy has extended to more pages.

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