Meanwhile, Back in Delhi

by CKR

Still wondering how the US – India nuclear talks are going? Sounds like the State Department may be wondering, too. Talks are scheduled for today (already over in India) and tomorrow on the issues that remain in a nuclear deal.

The US team led by Assistant Secretary of State John C. Rood discussed with officials of the Indian external affairs ministry led by Hamid Ali Rao, joint secretary (disarmament), a wide range of issues including multilateral initiatives and strategic trade controls and regional security matters.

The dialogue on non-proliferation has acquired added significance in the last two years in the context of the India-US civil nuclear deal.

During the two-day talks that began here Wednesday, the Indian side highlighted the dangers of clandestine proliferation, especially by the Khan network, the underground nuclear market managed by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan which has allegedly sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

The two sides also discussed the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists and steps needed to avert such a possibility, reliable sources said.

Uh. That’s either that the talks are going somewhere or not. Going somewhere would be that India’s offer of an “internationally-safeguarded” reprocessing plant to reprocess US-supplied fuel is being discussed and they’re not going to say anything about it until they get agreement. Not is that they decided to dump on Pakistan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.

"Reprocessing is absolutely necessary for us because we do not want to have a situation like the repetition of Tarapur," [Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee] said.

He’s referring to a sticky point in US-Indian relations. This is how many Indians see it:

India had obtained in 1963 its first two power reactors from the U.S. at Tarapur, near Bombay, with a promise of lifetime support. But Washington changed its policy unilaterally and stopped supplying fuel soon after India tested its first nuclear device at Pokhran in India's northwestern desert state of Rajasthan in 1974.

What that leaves out is that the agreement India signed with the United States to get those two power reactors said that they would be used for peaceful purposes only. The Indians declared that first nuclear test peaceful, but the United States didn’t buy that. So it refused to supply fuel for the reactors and wouldn’t allow India to reprocess the spent fuel that accumulated. The legislation recently passed by the US congress to allow the current deal to be negotiated requires that nuclear cooperation with India stop if India tests any more nuclear devices, peaceful or not.

The Indians are framing the issue as one of “supply disruptions.” It is true that this would be the major concern for internationalization of nuclear fuel supply, but the question is whether a nation seeking to extend its nuclear weapons capability should have an unlimited supply of nuclear materials from other nations. Although Congress passed the enabling legislation far too quickly and easily, some safeguards of the most elementary kind were included.

The offer of a safeguarded reprocessing plant is one of the first small moves on the Indian side. What is meant by “internationally safeguarded,” when that plant would be built, and where its plutonium product would go are all questions that have to be answered. Also what the Indians expect in return. From what I’m reading, that will be an unqualified right to all the nuclear fuel they might want to buy from the United States and elsewhere, more nuclear weapons tests notwithstanding.