The Hindu Business Line : Nuclear deal: UPA could have handled it better

By far the entity most responsible for all the confusion is the UPA by refusing to share with the Left parties the full text of the scheme for India-specific safeguards; this should be reason enough for tension. It should not be surprising if keeping up appearances of total support for the nuclear deal is causing uneasiness within the UPA itself.

B. S. Raghavan

The falling out of erstwhile friends and allies, especially the high-decibel sparring between the Congress and the Left, is threatening to assume unseemly dimensions. Apparently, the course of events of the last few days has contributed to fraying of nerves on all sides.

Just as morning shows the day, the highly-strung behaviour of the squabbling disputants presages an election campaign that will be marked by vehement, and even virulent, trading by the parties constituting the ruling coalition and the opposition of ugly charges extending far beyond the ambit of the nuclear deal.

Understandably enough, the causes of tension prevailing in the various camps are not the same. The Left parties must be feeling tense over its haste in pushing things to a point of no return, with ultimatums and the like, instead of keeping the doors open whatever the provocation.

There can be no prospect more mortifying to the Left than that of voting shoulder-to-shoulder with the BJP in a confidence motion.

By making an issue of the Prime Minister’s observation, in answer to a reporter’s question, and not on his own, as a policy pronouncement, about going to the IAEA and by seeming to destabilise the Government on an issue not of any vital concern for the large mass of people grovelling under the burden of rising prices, it has willy-nilly spoilt its chances of influencing the complexion of the deal.

As for the NDA, especially the BJP, it must be finding it galling to become a victim of political exigencies and seem like going back on its own major initiative of forging a strategic partnership with the US whom its own leader, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, described as a ‘natural ally’.

It must also be ruing its decision to oppose the deal on the ground of the implied ban on any further nuclear test, thereby flying in the face of Mr Vajpayee’s declaration in the UN abjuring any more tests on India’s part.

Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi

By far the entity most responsible for all the confusion is the UPA and this should be reason enough for tension. Additionally, the UPA camp is not free from self-doubt. Not all forming part of the coalition, not all within the

Congress party itself, and certainly not all in the scientific community, are equally convinced of the merits of the deal, other than going by the say-so of the Prime Minister and his close advisers. It should not be surprising if keeping up appearances of total support for the deal is causing acute uneasiness within the UPA itself.

Further, those in the Congress who still retain some degree of objectivity and familiarity with inter-governmental dealings must be gnawed by a feeling that the complacent stand taken by the Government on the implications of the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement in relation to it does not hold water and, in fact, it falls within the category of suppression veri and suggestio falsi.

For instance, it is hard to imagine that two astute and legally savvy persons than Messrs, Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, would have allowed themselves, as government and party spokespersons, to assert repeatedly, one can be sure, to their painful discomfort, that the Hyde Act is a domestic legislation of the US with no application to India and that nothing in the 123 Agreement stops India from conducting a nuclear test.

Both statements are only superficially correct. The Hyde Act is a US domestic legislation no doubt, but it is binding on the organs of the US Government.

It requires the US Administration to enforce, with regular reports from the President to the Congress, the following conditions:

a) 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;

b) India must fully and actively participate in US’ and international efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons capability and the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess nuclear fuel and the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction;

c) If India is not assessed to be fully and actively participating in such efforts, the President must submit to the Congress a description of:

the measures the US Government has taken to secure India’s full and active participation in such efforts;

the responses of the Government of India to such measures; and

the measures the US Government plans to take in the coming year to secure India’s full and active participation. (Arm twisting is another name for this)

(d) India must make available to the US full and complete information on its nuclear-elated activities, including such nitty-gritty as an estimate of the amount of uranium mined and milled in India during the previous year; the amount of such uranium that has likely been used or allocated for the production of nuclear explosive devices; and the rate of production in India of fissile material for nuclear explosive devices; an estimate of the amount of electricity India’s nuclear reactors produced for civil purposes during the previous year and the proportion of such production that can be attributed to India’s declared civil reactors; and an analysis as to whether imported uranium has affected the rate of production in India of nuclear explosive devices.

If, after signing the deal, India is pressed for these details by the US from time to time, can it refuse saying that the Hyde Act is the domestic legislation of the US?

Section 106 of the Hyde Act is also categorical that all exemptions and waivers granted under the Act shall cease to be effective if India is found to have detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment. If the President does not act on this requirement, he will be liable to impeachment for breach of law.

And if all further flow of fuel, technology and equipment ceases and those already supplied are recalled, can India plead that the Hyde Act is a domestic legislation?

Specious argument

True, the 123 Agreement nowhere says, as has been pointed out by Mr Pranab Mukherjee, that India cannot explode a nuclear device. But it does say that both the US and India shall implement the Agreement in accordance with its ‘respective applicable’ national laws.

The Hyde Act being a US national law, the US is duty-bound to hold India accountable for adhering to its prescriptions. Which means that India can only explode a nuclear device on pain of being subjected to the sanctions under the Act. Yes, India can explode, but in the process, the US-India relations also will explode!

Apart from the above, the Congress and the Government have also, in another sense, been instrumental in breaking the UPA-Left alliance by refusing to share with the latter the full text of the scheme for India-specific safeguards worked out with the IAEA secretariat on the plea that it is a ‘privileged document’. This is an untenable, and indeed, specious, argument.

The scheme is, in any case, soon going to be, and is indeed meant to be, shared with the 35 members of the IAEA Governing Board representing different countries and their bureaucracies are going to be examining it.

It is preposterous to argue that a document that is going to be freely circulating among a thousand functionaries belonging to diverse nationalities round the globe cannot be made available to one’s own patriotic countrymen.

A similar absurdity was resorted to by the Government, when it commandeered its Foreign Secretary, no less, to fly to the US to tremulously hand over to the US Administration, like a schoolboy to the headmaster, full particulars of the atomic energy department’s assets of every description which were kept top secret from its own citizens, subjecting them to all the rigours of the Official Secrets Act.

Heavens would not have fallen if the UPA had taken the Left into confidence on the contents of the safeguards scheme proposed to be taken to the IAEA and let it be discussed at the meeting already fixed for July 10.

On the contrary, a patient and considerate approach would have helped the Government to focus unrelentingly on the real problems of economic management, without the distraction of all the frenetic politicking that is currently going on.

Regrettably, the whole drama has been played out by the political class as if the people did not exist.

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