AFP, Washington: US President George W. Bush has set a dangerous precedent by moving to lift a ban on civilian nuclear technology sale to nuclear armed India, which has not signed up to global non-proliferation rules, some analysts and lawmakers said Tuesday.
The warning came as a bipartisan energy panel of the US House of Representatives adopted a resolution Tuesday preventing export of nuclear technology to India and other countries not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and which have detonated a nuclear device.
“We are playing with fire by picking and choosing when to pay attention to the existing non-proliferation treaties,” panel member Democratic Representative Ed Markey said even before the ink could dry on a joint statement by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released Monday.
Bush said in the statement that he would ask Congress and allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology as part of a new bilateral partnership forged with Singh.
Under the agreement, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries for nuclear power aimed at driving rapid economic growth in the world's second most populous nation.
India, in return, would allow international inspections and safeguards on its civilian nuclear program — but not its nuclear-weapons arsenal — and refrain from further weapons tests.
The United States had placed sanctions on India after its second round of nuclear tests in May 1998, but agreed after the September 11, 2001, attacks to waive those and other sanctions in return for support in the war on terrorism.
US law bars export of technology that could aid a nuclear program of any country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
“It is an extremely dangerous and unwarranted decision to try and cooperate on civil nuclear technology with India at this point,” said Jon Wolfsthal, an expert on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private non-profit group.
He said Bush's action “does nothing” to cap or slow down or otherwise alter India's nuclear weapons advancement and would greatly weaken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had kept some 180 signatory countries such as Japan and Germany from acquiring nuclear weapons themselves.
“Now they would look at the decision by the US and say: when India can have nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors too, then why not us,” Wolfsthal said.
India, which has arch nuclear rival Pakistan as its neighbour, is “actively producing new nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles, he said.
While India's relationship with Pakistan is stable for the moment, he said, it was unclear how the nuclear question would develop in South Asia in the future.
Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, underlined India's strict adherence to non-proliferation procedures and protection of sensitive technology as a basis for the US decision.
He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to brief him on the US decision and that he seemed “supportive of what we have done.”
The IAEA is the global nuclear watchdog.
US officials have also explained to counterparts in France, Germany, Britain and Pakistan about the US move to share civilian nuclear technology with India.
Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non-profit institution specializing in security, said the Bush administration move to judge nations based on “whether they are good or bad and not their nuclear weapons” reflected “a very, very significant shift in the philosophy behind US non proliferation and disarmament policy.”
He acknowledged that India was an important partner for the United States “but if we change the rules of proliferation, we can't change them only with respect to our friends.”
“Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina — there are many countries who will say why not us too?
“And there will be other nuclear suppliers who will be ready to oblige and the US ability to have other suppliers exercise restraint will be weakened because we don't wish to be restrained,” Krepon said. “This spells trouble for proliferation.”
