What fallout from Indian nuclear deal?

[Neo]

What fallout from Indian nuclear deal? ​

By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

Under deal, US accepts Indian status as nuclear weapons state

The nuclear deal between the United States and India raises major questions about the spread of nuclear weapons as well as illustrating India's new importance as a strategic American partner.

The deal was finally agreed by the US Senate on Wednesday, having previously been given approval by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Under it, India is now able to receive supplies and technology for its growing nuclear power industry, ending a boycott imposed by nuclear supplier states (through the Nuclear Suppliers' Group) because it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

India can keep and develop its nuclear weapons programme, but has to open up certain of its nuclear power plants to IAEA inspection.

IAEA view

For some, like the IAEA, it is the best of a bad situation, in that it at least gets India under a more substantial inspection regime than it is currently is subject to and raises the prospect of more to come.

The IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said: "I believe the agreement is good for India, is good for the world, is good for non-proliferation, is good for our collective effort to move towards a world free from nuclear weapons."

However, critics argue that it has driven a wedge into the NPT because it in effect accepts that India has nuclear weapons while not being a signatory to the treaty and ends sanctions against it.

A 'disaster'

"It is a disaster for the non-proliferation regime," said Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

"The perception will be that it solidifies a double standard in favour of India. Pakistan, Iran and North Korea will use its as an excuse to carry on with their activities. Others, like Egypt for example, might in the future use this as an example for them as well.

"It will create a fear in Pakistan that India will outpace it. At the moment, they both have about 60 to 70 nuclear weapons, and are capable of making five to 10 more each year.

"This agreement will enable India to import uranium for its civilian nuclear energy plants and free up its own uranium for weapons, possibly increasing its capability by five to 10 times. India is excluding some of its nuclear plants from inspection which indicates that it wants to keep its options open.

"The Bush administration sold this as a non-proliferation benefit but oversold it and to make it so, both India and the US have to make a reality of the dormant proposed treaty to stop the production of fissile material.

"Iran meanwhile has made unexpectedly rapid progress in the enrichment of uranium. It is producing 2.5 kilos of low enriched uranium a day and could have enough to be able to produce sufficient highly enriched material for a nuclear weapon by next March, if it chose to do so." Iran says it will not do so.

Strong support

However there is strong support for the deal from the US and Indian governments. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is paying a visit to India to mark the passage of the agreement.

It seals the new relationship between the US and India, which was marked by coolness during the Cold War.

Philip H Gordon, Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution in Washington, also argues in favour of the agreement and wrote: "Opponents of the deal insist that its approval would send the wrong message to other countries that are currently threatening the nuclear non-proliferation regime, such as Iran. In fact, the deal does not signal international indifference to proliferation.

"The pact shows that the international community is prepared to distinguish between countries that abide by, and are increasing co-operation with, the nuclear non-proliferation regime - like India - and those that defy it.

"In an ideal world, rejection of the nuclear deal would preserve the sanctity of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and make the world a safer place. In the world we live in, however, it would do little to prevent non-proliferation and significantly harm India, the United States, and their ability to do good things together."

Among the "good things" to be done "together" is expected to be the sale to India of US technology for nuclear power generation. Russia and France are also in line to sell India their nuclear power wares.

India certainly needs more generation capacity and a by-product of the agreement could be that global warming might be reduced if India becomes less reliant on coal for producing its electricity.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

 

[Neo]

Pakistan, India and the nuclear deal​

The US Congress has passed the US-India nuclear agreement and the $100 billion Indian nuclear market will now be open to American business after President Bush has signed the deal. The deal gives legal space to India outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) though Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is on record as denying the notion of the five recognised nuclear powers under the NPT as “legitimate”. A sharp international lawyer, Mr ElBaradei’s interpretation is consistent with Article VI of the NPT which insists on total disarmament. He has also advocated pulling Pakistan and Israel into the recognised nuclear regime.

Pakistan has officially protested the “deal” in the past. However, it faced a paradox. It could either go all out and oppose it or demand a similar deal for itself in which case it could not use the proliferation argument to oppose the US-India deal. In reality, it happily let the non-proliferationists in the US oppose the deal while lobbying for it herself. There was never a consistent policy but privately everyone in Islamabad had realised that it could not stop the deal from outside. Pakistan therefore hoped that the deal would make shipwreck on a number of rocks, given the meandering course it had to take to fruition. Ironically, the deal nearly got wrecked because of the Left and Right within India!

Some elements within Pakistan are trying to present a bleak picture of what India can get out of this deal. The fact is that the advantage of the deal to India is not that it will be able to make more bombs or become energy-efficient. It already has enough bombs to deter Pakistan and the deal is unlikely to address its energy needs beyond 10 to 12 percent. The real advantage is that the United States and with it Russia, France, Australia et al have accepted India’s rising status as a partner state and gone a couple of extra miles to accommodate its nuclear status legally outside the NPT. That is where the rub lies.

When President Bush said that Pakistan could not get a similar deal, he was pointing to how Pakistan is looked at despite being an ally. The Pakistani public has never made any bones about being anti-American. Washington knows that Pakistan is allied with it not because it accepts the current global status quo but because it cannot break free of it presently. India, on the other hand, has accepted the global architecture and gone to work on enhancing its status within it. There is a world of difference between the two approaches, present as they do two different worldviews.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has brushed aside the deal by saying that it provides moral justification for Pakistan to get the same kind of “deal” from someone who can supply nuclear technology to it. President Asif Ali Zardari, who says he expects the international community to come up with a $100 billion bailout grant for Pakistan, is miffed about the Indo-American nuclear deal, but not overly so. He knows Pakistan is in dire straits economically and politically and the charges of proliferation continue to haunt it. In fact, he said in New York that “India has never been a threat to Pakistan. I, for one, and our democratic government are not scared of Indian influence abroad”. He is also in favour of trading freely with India.

Opinion in Pakistan thinks Islamabad is not doing enough to get a similar deal from China. Such thinking is unrealistic and totally unaware of the compulsions China has with regard to breaking, not so much the NPT, which is broken now anyway, as the agreement with the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) of countries who have nuclear technology on offer. It has helped Pakistan and will continue to do so but within certain constraints and, most importantly, it would not want to go around flaunting such help.

At the nuclear club, China, while voting with the rest on the Indo-US deal, has spoken in favour of giving Pakistan the same kind of exemption from the NPT as was given to India. Here is the beginning of Pakistan’s march back to being a normal state. In the coming months the government should show the world that it wants to become normal despite all the internal pressures to continue on the path of anarchy and international isolation. And as its first big step in that direction it must get on the fast track of normalisation of relations with India. Pakistan’s insecurity is coming from its economy because in the past it has done almost nothing to rectify those structural problems that can unleash the country’s economic potential.

The world was not all in favour of the nuclear deal between the US and India. Anti-proliferationists inside and outside the US warned against violating the NPT and throwing the world open to proliferation. They envisage many states in the Middle East — with ample supplies of oil to burn — trying to set up nuclear power plants, a clear indication of ultimate nuclearisation. But everyone thought that the hurdle of getting a no-objection certificate from the 45 countries with bans placed on India would be un-crossable. However, when the NSG said yes, the deal was finally done.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons and they will always be a good “minimum” deterrent if Pakistan walks the road of peace and begins to address its internal problems. One irreducible consequence of deterrence between two nuclear powers is the freezing of the status quo. Every time Pakistan has tried to change it, it has lost trust and prestige in the world. The decision to devote more attention to Pakistan’s internal disorder must come from the elected leadership of the country and not from the army. Pakistan is in the process of coping with the blowback of the doctrine of “strategic depth”, a purely military idea which no one is able to explain and justify.

 

[Always Neutral]

Some very interesting points Neo. If Pakistan already has the minimum deterrant then I feel Pakistan should sign the NPT and the CTBT. It has nothing to loose and all to gain.

Regards

 

[Neo]

Thanks AN!

Pakistan will only sign NPT once she's officially recognised as a nuclear state becoming P6 or P7. Even India is not recognised as P6 yet and she's holding better cards than Pakistan.

CTBT is a different issue, we're still in the process of developping and refining nuclear designs and in future we'll have to do limited testing to check yield and to collect new data. Untill then CTBT is out of question.

Yes, we do believe in minimum deterrance but then again the term 'minimum' includes a credible second launch capability so the number depends on the capacity of India.

 

[DarkStar]

Thanks AN!

Pakistan will only sign NPT once she's officially recognised as a nuclear state becoming P6 or P7. Even India is not recognised as P6 yet and she's holding better cards than Pakistan.

CTBT is a different issue, we're still in the process of developping and refining nuclear designs and in future we'll have to do limited testing to check yield and to collect new data. Untill then CTBT is out of question.

Yes, we do believe in minimum deterrance but then again the term 'minimum' includes a credible second launch capability so the number depends on the capacity of India.

I believe that Pakistan should fully prepare for further nuclear tests.

Esp. I believe Pakistan should test a thermo nuclear weapon.

Along with that, such infrastructure should be made available so that the results can be used for further simulation tests which will then not require any physical explosions at all.

After that Pakistan should sign the CTBT and NPT no matter what the INdians do.

 

[PeaceForAll]

I think the right to perform nuclear tests should belong to Pakistan for as much time as pak feels it has the perfect scientific knowldge on how to make these weapons in case of a need.

What I do not feel good about is the manner in which the already nuclear states boss about other countries not to have such capabilities. What authority do they have? As long as they do not come out in the open and destroy their weapons, every state has the right to perform tests and consequently nuclear bombs.

Picture this, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is a major deterrent in even American attack on Pakistan, had Pak signed a CTBT or NPT before it tested Nuclear weapons, US would have been able to pressurise it further.

So I would say, good decision by Pak not to sign the CTBT or NPT which actualy is helping it now. I just hope Pak rises above India centric views to World centric, pak needs to break its shackles and understand its true potential.

 

[Black Stone]

Although Pakistan has the right to conduct another test but as a consequence she will be politically and economically isolated by the world. Is Pakistan willing to risk this inorder to do another test?.

 

[PeaceForAll]

until all the nuclear armed countries destroy their nuclear weapons, they do not have the right to tell others not to develop nuclear weapons. If the nuclear weapons are so dangerous, then why should US, USSR even china possess them legally? knowing that almost all of the present nuclear armed countries have been aggressors?

the world has to completely freed of N-weapons.. and that includes every country.. and as long as even one country has a stockpile, there is no way the other countries would feel secure.

 

[Neo]

Pakistan takes a swipe at US-India nuclear deal​

* Permanent envoy to UN says policies that create nuclear disparities to exacerbate strategic asymmetries, destabilise world
* Stresses renewed commitment by all states to complete disarmament under effective international control​

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: In a sharp though indirect reference to the newly concluded US-India nuclear co-operation agreement, Ambassador Zamir Akram told the UN General Assembly’s First Committee that “policies that create nuclear disparities in our region and reinforce the discriminatory approach towards Pakistan can only contribute to exacerbating strategic asymmetries that would destabilise the entire region and indeed the world.”

In his address, Akram, who is Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva, said, “Such an arrangement, driven by profit motives rather than any real non-proliferation gains, would in fact encourage further proliferation. It would have been more constructive to have promoted a level playing field for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy under appropriate safeguards through an objective, non-discriminatory criteria-based approach. Notwithstanding the grave implications of the discriminatory regime that is to be implemented in South Asia, Pakistan will continue to act with responsibility in maintaining its minimum credible deterrence and to avoid an arms race. However, we will neither be oblivious to our security requirements nor to the needs of our economic development.”
Akram said because of the weakening of the consensus underpinning disarmament and non-proliferation, there are clear differences of perspective, approach and modalities among states to promote international and regional peace and security through disarmament and non-proliferation efforts. Lack of progress towards nuclear disarmament and advocacy by a few powerful states of doctrines such as pre-emption, development of new war-fighting nuclear weapons and the development and deployment of destabilising systems like the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems are perpetuating tensions at the regional and global levels.

He said, “Discriminatory and short sighted policies for access to nuclear technology, for narrow gains, in disregard of any equitably applicable criteria, has further undermined the international non-proliferation regime and detracts from its credibility and legitimacy. This is compounded by the clear possibility of such arrangements leading to diversion of nuclear material for military purposes.”

Renewed commitment:
Akram proposed that the architecture of a global consensus on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation should rest on a solid foundation comprising, among others, the following elements: a renewed commitment by all states to general and complete disarmament under effective international control; transparency, verifiability and irreversibility should be the fundamental principles applied to all disarmament measures; an international agreement on universal and non-discriminatory criteria for international cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including nuclear power generation; and urgent efforts for peaceful settlement of disputes and removing underlying security concerns of states.

Akram assured the General Assembly that Pakistan’s strategic assets are safe and secure, the country having established a National Command Authority in February 2000 to ensure safe custodial controls of all strategic assets and to place them under strong organisational, administrative and command and control structures. Attempts by some quarters to raise doubts in this regard are obviously driven by ulterior motives and deliberately ignore the safety and security measures we have put in place, he added. He reminded the First Committee that Pakistan has always been against the introduction of nuclear weapons in its region and beyond. He wanted it noted that Pakistan was not the first to introduce nuclear weapons in South Asia, having been compelled to respond in view of its supreme national security interest. He added, “Our longstanding pursuit of a nuclear weapon free South Asia was thwarted in 1998 by the nuclear tests in our neighbourhood. We were forced to respond in order to restore the strategic balance in the region. Yet since 1998, as a nuclear weapon state, Pakistan has consistently stated and followed its commitment to restraint and responsibility.”