Bharat’s worst fears have become its worst nighmare. The Hillary celebration party is as much fun as a wake. This was a bad week not only for Bharati Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but also for Bharat. Amid all the pomp and cermony of Hillary Clinton’s seminal trip to  India, the truth about the Delhi-Washington strategic relationship came out into the open. There was a poison pill in the Nuclear deal signed between Premier SIngh and Secretary of State Clinton. Nuclear End-Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA). The EUMA agreement allows US inspectors into high-end defense installations and places the use of US-sourced technology in a restrictive framework. 

As part of the 123 Nuclear agreement and as part of the sale of Defenes agreements, the United States had been pressing India to sign several agreements related to defense cooperation. Some of these are:

1. End Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA).
2. Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CIS MoA).
3. Mutual Logistic Support Agreement (MLSA).

All these agreements contain a series of restrictive clauses and impose instrusive inspections and servere limitations on the use of the equipment. The 123 Nuclear deal was supposed to be the capstone of Sonai Gandhi’s government studded with token minorities. The US has is using its allies in the Nuclear Supplier’s Group (NSG) to impose conditions on the Indian Government which in effect would curtail Delhi’s and its independence and what it considers to be its soverign right to conduct any additional nuclear tests. The NSG curtials the Indian right to conduct any future tests, imposes restriction on the transfer of nuclear technology to India and asks it suppot the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (without actually signing it).

This places Dr. Manmohan Singh in a precarious position. Already he faces severe opposition from the left and survived only after the BJP surreptously suported it, even though publicly the BJP had opposed the Indian National Congress government.

Unless India does not get a clean waiver with the Nuclear Supply Group, the government should not take forward the nuclear deal, said BJP president Rajnath Singh here.Speaking on a wide range of issues on his maiden interaction with the media after a BJP government returned to power in Himachal, about 8 months ago, Singh said, “The apprehensions expressed by the opposition to the nuclear deal were coming true in negotiations being carried out.” News reports about BJP opposition to the 123 deal

Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal (United), M. Thambi Durai of the AIADMK, and Bhartuhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal also joined the Opposition chorus, leading the government to promise a statement before the rising of the House. The Hindu

The bugbear of India becoming a client state (rather than an equal partner) in an imperialistic American design was resurrected as the central theme as both joined hands in Parliament to pillory the government. For New Delhi, a week that wasn’t By Santwana Bhattacharya

Although the agreed language deviates in some aspects from the standard EUMA text applicable to client States, the United States managed to get India to accept the core conditions. Rediff

US has signed end user agreement with 82 countries and doubts were raised by the opposition parties that the EUMA will also legitimize US to inspect even those defense equipment which are supplied by third countries for example Israel can also be inspected by the US. ThaiIndian

Basudeb Acharia of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Gurudas Dasgupta of the CPI, Mulayam Singh of the Samajwadi Party, and Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal joined Mr. Sinha in describing the EUMA as “against the country’s interests” and a “Himalayan blunder,” while accusing the government of keeping Parliament and the country in the dark. The Hindu

Navy chief Admiral Suresh Mehta had publicly described EUMA as ‘intrusive.’ Speaking at an April 2008 conference organised by the London-based International Strategic Studies Institute in New Delhi, Admiral Mehta said: ‘There are certain things we can’t agree to. As a sovereign nation, we can’t accept intrusiveness into our system, so there is some fundamental difficulty.‘ Rediff

Leaders of the Opposition in the two Houses L.K. Advani (Lok Sabha) and Arun Jaitley (Rajya Sabha) immediately cried foul and termed the agreement “disastrous.” The Hindu

India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in a March 2008 report criticized the end-use monitoring clauses in the contract for the USS Trenton/INS Jalashwa...The CAG report stated: ‘Restrictive clauses raise doubts about the real advantages from this deal… For example, (there are) restrictions on the offensive deployment of the ship and permission to the (US) government to conduct an inspection and inventory of all articles transferred under the end-use monitoring clause of the LOA (Letter of Offer and Acceptance issued by the US government).’ Note that the contract contains even ‘restrictions on the offensive deployment of the ship.’ Rediff

Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) said the agreement was part of a pattern — the virtual shelving of the India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline, indications of India supporting the U.S. rather than the developing countries in the Doha Round, and other signs of “compromising” its economic and political sovereignty. The Hindu

But the Opposition, joined by the SP, staged a walkout in protest.

Leader of Opposition L K Advani, who led the walkout in Lok Sabha, said the Opposition was dissatisfied with the government statement and the decision would “send a wrong message”.

To the discomfiture of the government, UPA constituent DMK sympathised with Opposition apprehensions and Tiruchi Siva, its member in Rajya Sabha, sought clarifications. Indian Express

When the statement was made, however, it was a bare listing of the agreements signed during the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Hindu

Rupee News had clearly identified the fine prints in the Nuclear Agreement would in the end place the entire Bharati Nuclear program under US inspection regime. This is exaclty what has happened. While the Delhi government is trying to put a positive spin on the capitulation to US diktats, the Bharati opposition is not so thrilled by the the febrile declarations, fulminations and disquisitions of the coalition government.

There is a new Sheriff in town in Washington, and the past practices of the Republican Administration are not so popular in the Democratic majority. Why the US gave up India as a strategic partner. In another sign of the the fraying Indo-US relations, the Obama Administration has backed the G-8 (United States, Britain, France, Canada, Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan) demand not to sell Nuclear enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) items to countries that have not signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Only three countries have not signed the NPT. The three countries are Israel, Bharat and Pakistan. Israel gets all the nuclear materials she needs from a variety of sources and has built up an arsenal of more than 250 bombs. Pakistan has a totally indigenous program which is not dependent on any imported nuclear material from any country. Therefore the only target of the G-8 Memorandum is Bharat. Delhi is directly affected by the G-8 ruling.

 “It is a trap, and it prevents India from any future nuclear test. We firmly believe that India has walked into the nonproliferation trap that the U.S. has set for us,” said Yashwant Sinha, a member of Parliament from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

The lack of a statement from Delhi on the subject leaves analysts to fear the worst. The Delhi diplomats have been so surprised by the US reversal that they do not know what to say and how to put a spin on the subject. They should have expected this. In fact Rupee News already predicted this several weeks agon in a series of articles listed here.

• Indian gloating on Nuclear deal challenged by China-Pakistan nexus.
• Pakistan already has a Nuclear Deal with China! India tried to raise expectations to portend failure!
• http://rupeenews.com/2008/09/09/india-trapped-in-nuclear-proliferation-treatyban-on-future-tests/
• http://rupeenews.com/2008/08/29/indian-123-nuclear-deal-fails-despite-pppp-capitulationto-us/
• India trapped in Nuclear 123 Treaty: Ban on future tests

The 123 agreement was the singular foreign policy achievement, some would say the singular achievement of the Congress government. Now that symbol of American-Bharati cooperation is not only tarnished, it is sinking into a black hole.

Against this background, the Indian government ought to have taken Parliament into confidence on the EUMA rather than place on record just the two sentences on the agreement found in Krishna’s statement on Clinton’s visit.

[*] The MLSA envisages exchange of services and logistics. If it gets signed, the Indian and American militaries will provide logistic support, berthing and refueling facilities to each other’s warships and aircraft on a barter or equal-value exchange basis. But given that the Indian military, including the navy, has no deployments or operations outside the region, the MSLA, in effect, would be a one-sided arrangement.

[?] The purchase of the USS Trenton was severely criticized by the Comptroller and Auditor General, which in its report raised several questions, including why the ship was bought when the US Navy itself had concluded in 2003 that the ship was not suitable for modernization ought to be decommissioned in 2006. The report pointed out gas leaks on board other Trenton-type ships in which three American sailors lost their lives. Rediff. http://news.rediff.com/special/2009/jul/22/end-use-monitoring-agreement-a-factsheet.htm

There is a lot of opposition to the EUMA. The fine print of the Hyde Amendment is a minefield for those moving forward on the Indo-US Nuclear deal. The Hyde Amendment is a piece of legislation that Congress passed in December 2006, called the Henry J Hyde Act, which imposes numerous conditions upon India, including an end to nuclear cooperation with the US if India conducts a nuclear test. A Democratic Administration could impose the Hyde Amendment on the 123 deal and cause havoc with the Bush-India deal. The Bush Administration had made the Nuclear deal a cornerstone of its Pro-India and Anti-China policy. Those were the days of building India as a counterweight to China.

India agreed during US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s visit to the end-user agreement that will allow the US to monitor the end use of the arms and sensitive technologies sold to India and ensure that they are not diverted to other countries..  Time of India

The agreement attracted criticism from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Left parties that alleged it undermined India’s sovereignty by allegedly opening up its defence arsenal to intrusive inspections by the US

Many think that Premier Manmohan Singh has dropped the ball. Rupee News had predicted the unraveling of the 123 deal on September 9th, 2008. This is what we wrote. India trapped in Nuclear 123 Treaty: Ban on future tests

The Indian left is right!  Panglossian elitist triumphalism has inebriated the elitist ruling class into thinking that 123 will instantly propel them into the 23rd century with some sort of magical competitive advantage- blinding the penury stricken pullulating millions into embracing an inequitable deal which seriously impinges on Indian sovereignty & exacerbates the arms race in the Subcontinent, and only fills the coffers of the corrupt & multinationals. Every time the elite has tried to leapfrog the competition, it has had to face unsurmountable impediments.

Although Mr. Krishna departed from practice in the Lok Sabha and tried to answer the questions raised, all the unsatisfied parties — the BJP, the CPI(M), the CPI, the SP, and the AIADMK — walked out, with members in the Rajya Sabha following suit a little later.

Outside the House, the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj repeated the demand that the agreement be abrogated.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari was dismissive of the Opposition for displaying a lack of confidence in India’s ability to engage with the world. The Hindu. “India’s sovereignty compromised” New Delhi Bureau

India is now fully ensnarled with all the provisions of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without actually signing the treaty. India cannot conduct another test, and almost all of its facilities are under IAEA or other monitoring. If the contract is broken, the US has the ability and the legal wherewithal to retrieve all facilities, and technology. The US will not transfer sensitive and dual use technology to India. The agreement forces India to conform to the Hyde Laws which are NPT in another form:

To make the matters worse, India’s Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon admitted that the joint statement was poorly drafted.

Second, the End-Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA) that was signed on the United State’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India. The agreement meant that US has the rights to monitor the weapons that it supplies to India. Besides the opposition parties there is a section within the Congress party which believes that India has compromised its sovereignty by finalizing the EUMA.

One of the silent critics of this seems to be the No.2 in the government Pranab Mukherjee, the present Finance Minister and the former Foreign Minister. The part of the problem with Dr.Singh’s foreign policy is his inexperience in Foreign Policy and secondly, the inexperience of the S.M.Krishna, the former Chief Minister of Karnataka to Foreign Policy. International Reporter

The barrage of criticism within Bharat was incessant and never ending.

NEW DELHI: A government statement on the End-Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA) between India and the United States in Parliament on Tuesday failed to satisfy Opposition parties, leading to a walkout after they charged the government with compromising sovereignty by allowing “intrusive” inspections of sensitive defence installations.

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna made identical statements in both Houses, saying the agreement “systematises ad hoc arrangements for individual defence procurements from the U.S. entered into by previous governments.” The EUMA would “henceforth be referred to in letters of acceptance for Indian procurement of U.S. defence technology and equipment.” The Hindu. “India’s sovereignty compromised” New Delhi Bureau