Senate Backs Far-Reaching Nuclear Trade Deal with India

I am muchly displeased by this. How can we expect other contries to abide by the NPT if we basically reward India for violating it? How can we give Iran a hard time about developing possible nuclear capabilities and then tell India it's okay? This undermines the entire non-proliferation regime. And Pakistan's already mad enough at us. I can't imagine it'll be pleased that we're basically going to be supplying India, or at least allowing it to be supplied, with nuclear material. Well done, Congress.

Senate Backs Far-Reaching Nuclear Trade Deal With India

Measure Goes to Bush, Giving The President a Rare Victory Glenn
Kessler, Washington Post, 2 October 2008, Page A17

The Senate last
night approved a historic agreement that opens up nuclear trade with India for
the first time since New Delhi conducted a nuclear test three decades ago,
giving the Bush administration a significant foreign policy achievement in its
final months.

The bill, which passed 86 to 13, goes to President
Bush for his signature, handing the chief executive a rare victory that both
advocates and foes say will reverberate for decades. Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who conceived of the deal, have pushed hard for it from the
earliest weeks of the president's second term.

The agreement, which
sparked fierce opposition from nuclear proliferation experts, acknowledges India
as a de facto nuclear power, even though it has never signed the
Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
India until now has been barred from worldwide nuclear trade, leaving its
homegrown industry hobbled and short of uranium fuel to run its reactors. The
administration said the deal would bring a substantial portion of India's
nuclear industry -- though not the facilities that produce materials for weapons
-- under international observation.

Supporters, moreover, argue
that the deal will help India become a responsible world power and will forge
ties between two large democracies that have had an antagonistic relationship.
With an agreement in hand, India has said it plans to spend $14 billion on
reactors and other nuclear equipment next year, though France and Russia are
also expected to be key suppliers.

The ban on nuclear trade with
India was a "Gordian knot" that had forever hampered U.S. relations with India,
said Philip D. Zelikow, who as Rice's counselor in 2005 played a key role in
developing the proposal. "The Gordian knot has been cut, and that opens the way
for India to join the world's great powers, with all the responsibilities that
go with it."

Zelikow called the deal "a long-term bet that the
enlargement of India's role in the world is likely to be for the
good."

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control
Association, blasted the deal as a "nonproliferation disaster." India, along
with Pakistan and Israel, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India
conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, despite international outrage, and
continues to produce fissile material. Kimball said the deal "does not bring
India into the nonproliferation mainstream" because it "creates a
country-specific exemption from core nonproliferation standards that the United
States has spent decades to establish."

The agreement was
controversial in India as well and appeared all but dead several times over the
past three years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put his governing coalition at
risk this summer to finalize the deal before Bush left office. Communist
parties, fearful that the agreement would impinge on India's sovereignty, bolted
from the government, forcing Singh to find new partners to remain in power. Once
Singh secured his coalition, the Bush administration mounted a full-court press
to win final approval in Congress.

Opponents have complained
bitterly that in the rush, the administration made concessions that fell short
of requirements in a 2006 law that gave initial approval to the pact. "Never has
something of such moment and such significance and so much importance been
debated in such a short period of time and given such short shrift," Sen. Byron
L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) said yesterday.

But the agreement had the strong
support of both presidential candidates, helping grease the way to victory. The
House approved the bill Saturday, 298 to 117.

Last month, after
heavy U.S. pressure, a 45-nation group that governs trade in nuclear equipment
and materials granted a broad waiver authorizing nuclear trade with India. Rice
and U.S. diplomats had to overcome intense skepticism from a key group of
countries that are part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, any of which could have
blocked the deal.

The waiver was a tough sell because after India's
1974 test, the United States had pushed to create the suppliers group to close
loopholes that had allowed India to advance its weapons program through
supposedly peaceful nuclear cooperation. The controls have been so effective
that India's use of nuclear power has been severely limited, amounting to about
3 percent of the country's installed electricity capacity.

Then,
the administration had to persuade congressional leaders to sidestep a
requirement in the 2006 law that Congress be in 30 days of continuous session to
consider the deal. Rice last week also won over a leading skeptic, Rep. Howard
L. Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who
agreed to drop a competing bill that would have conflicted with the Senate
version. In exchange, Rice pledged that the United States in November would push
the suppliers group to issue guidelines banning sales of sensitive nuclear
equipment to countries that, like India, have not signed the Non-Proliferation
Treaty.

The change, if implemented, would undercut one of the
Indian government's key rationales for seeking the deal -- that it would open
the door for "full civil nuclear cooperation" with the rest of the
world.

In India, Singh and his aides also have insisted that the
deal would not constrain the country's right to conduct nuclear tests and would
provide an uninterrupted supply of fuel to India's nuclear
reactors.

In private correspondence with Congress that was made
public last month, the administration said the United States would terminate
nuclear trade with India if it conducted another nuclear test. But the
administration refused to add such terms to the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver,
and an amendment to the bill that would have made them explicit failed to pass
last night. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign
Relations Committee, argued that the amendment was not necessary because U.S.
laws made it clear that the deal was off if India tested
again.

"There should be no doubt" because of the floor debate,
Kimball said. "There will be practical consequences if India tests."
©
2008 The Washington Post Company

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