Joby Warrick in Washington
September 20, 2008
IN JANUARY 2006 an Indian Government agency placed newspaper advertisements seeking help to build an obscure piece of metal machinery. The details of the project, available to bidders, were laid out in a series of drawings that jolted nuclear weapons experts who discovered them.
The blueprints depicted a centrifuge, a machine used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. In most Western countries, such drawings would be secret, but the Indian diagrams were available for a nominal bidding fee, said David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector.
"We got them for about $US10," said Mr Albright, who called the incident a "serious leak of sensitive nuclear information".
The incident has fuelled concerns among opponents of a US-Indian civilian nuclear deal that the US Congress is expected to consider in the coming weeks.
The accord, first announced in 2005 by the Bush Administration, would lift a decades-old moratorium on nuclear trade with India, allowing US companies to share sensitive technology despite that country's refusal to ban nuclear testing or sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Backers of the deal say it will cement US ties with India and reward a country that has been a responsible steward of nuclear technology since it first joined the nuclear weapons club in 1974.
But opponents say India's record on non-proliferation is not as unblemished as claimed by the White House, which regards the nuclear pact as one of the foreign-policy highlights of the Bush Administration's second term. Critics accuse the White House of rushing the agreement through Congress without considering the long-term implications.
"This deal significantly weakens US and international security," said the retired Army Lieutenant-General Robert Gard, the chairman of the Washington-based Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. On Wednesday, a group of arms-control advocates and former government officials urged Congress to reject the deal.
Administration officials have lauded India's efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear technology, contrasting its behaviour with that of Pakistan, the home base of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the acknowledged nuclear smuggler who delivered weapons secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Likewise, India's Government says it deserves the trust of the world's nuclear gatekeepers. "India has an impeccable non-proliferation record," the External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said last week.
Opponents point to what they call decades of deceptive practices India has used to acquire nuclear materials. A draft report by Mr Albright and his Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington non-profit group that monitors the spread of weapons technology, cites recent incidents in which it says India engaged in "illicit nuclear trade".
A State Department spokesman declined to comment on Mr Albright's report, saying it had not been reviewed.
Other opponents have cited transfers of sensitive weapons technology by individual Indian scientists. Such incidents underscore concerns about the possible transfer of India's nuclear knowhow by rogue scientists and businessmen, said Henry Sokolski, a former Defence non-proliferation official.
