The double standards are visible everywhere. Pakistan was sanctioned for a decade for pursuing nuclear technology. India is rewarded with a nuclear deal. The campaign against a Pakistani scientist continues. However the 250 bombs of Israel are ignored. Many countries were using the illegal arms network including India. Pakistan’s India-specific program was an attempt at self-presevation. India’s nuclear program is an attempt to achieve world power prestige. There is a huge discussion of the alleged proliferation from Pakistan, and no discussion of the proliferation by India.
India’s proliferation Thursday, April 24, 2008, Adil Sultan
The India-US Joint Statement of July 18, 2005, provided a framework to negotiate bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. India was offered preferential treatment by the US, which cited India’s “impeccable” non-proliferation credentials. The stated objective was the strengthening of the international non-proliferation regime. However, the US administration and the other supporters of the agreement have been unable to explain how this could be achieved.
India has a less than enviable non-proliferation track record. First of all, it is a not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) – a prerequisite for civil nuclear cooperation for any country. India is being offered nuclear cooperation by carving out ‘India Specific’ exemptions. According to Pierre Goldschmidt of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), the August 2007 agreement for cooperation between the US and India concerning the peaceful uses of nuclear energy “would grant India all the benefits (and even more) that are specifically reserved, under Article IV of the NPT, for non-weapon States which are parties to the Treaty, without requesting from India any commitment…”
The US administration has also taken upon itself to bend the rules, unilaterally defining India as a “special case.” As for India’s non-proliferation credentials, it rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and wants to keep its options open for the future as well. The 123 Agreement negotiated between India and the US puts no such obligations on India. India also promised to work together with the US to conclude the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), but at the same time has been allowed to keep eight of the 22 facilities for military purposes. This means that these facilities would be working exclusively for producing fissile material stocks outside the purview of the IAEA safeguards. Thus India would not only be free to further develop its nuclear weapons programme, it would also receive from the US fuel supply assurances that have never been offered to any non-nuclear-weapon state.
India is also not a formal adherent to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). It does not support the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), and is yet to accord formal approval to the Container Security Initiative (CSI). It has also not implemented the US Mega-Port Initiative (MPI), does not support the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT) and the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). India is a non-participant state to the Convention on Nuclear Terrorism and does not endorse the IAEA Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources.
According to a news report the recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) by India is a result of joint collaboration between India and Israel. Defence News, quoting a senior official of the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation reported earlier that “India has asked Israel for technical assistance on the development work,” and the range of the Sagarika’ SLBM would be increased from 1,000 km to 2,500 km.
In a recent incident exposing the less than perfect security arrangements for nuclear material in India, four kilograms of uranium, reportedly worth Rs50 million in the international market, was seized while being smuggled across the India-Nepal border crossing. The June 2006 issue of WMD Insights quoted an Indian newspaper as saying that nuclear smuggling is quite frequent from uranium mines located at Jharkhand in the north. Thefts from these mines were mentioned in some earlier US government reports dating back to the 1970s. More recent reports dealing with illicit trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials suggest that uranium ore stolen from the Jaduguda mines in Jharkand has found its way to Nepal, headed for the international black market.
As Bob Einhorn, senior advisor at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington recently said, the India-US deal “will send the signal that the US – the country the world has always looked to as the leader in the global fight against proliferation – is now de-emphasising non-proliferation and giving it a back seat to other foreign-policy and commercial goals…. If the US is seen as changing or bending the rules when they no longer suit us, others can be expected to follow suit.”
The writer is an Islamabad-based defence analyst pursuing his doctoral studies at Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad – adilsultan66@yahoo.com
