Govt reopening closed nuclear issues

jun 16th, 2007

don't have a URL for this, but it's an important issue. subrahmanyam has been suspiciously shrill in his support for the US position. we can only conjecture about how his support has been er... ensured.

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From: Kanchan Gupta

Sunday Pioneer / Agenda / Column: Coffee Break / June 17, 2007

 

Govt reopening nuclear issues

On his way back from Heiligendamm, the Baltic Sea coast resort where the G-8 summit was held, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued an astounding statement, demanding that all "patriotic Indians" should support the India-US civilian nuclear deal. By implication, therefore, all those who do not support the deal in its present, hugely flawed form, are not patriotic Indians. On the other hand, those who support the deal despite, to quote Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, the glaring "gaps" in it, whose consequences can only be disastrous for India's nuclear programme, are patriotic Indians. If the Prime Minister's convoluted logic is to be taken seriously, placing India's interests above those of a foreign country, in this case not surprisingly the US, is an utterly unpatriotic act and those who refuse to blindly support the nuclear deal should be shamed and shunned.

Hence, the strategic affairs specialists and commentators who have been seeking to caution the Government against allowing the Americans to set the terms of engagement, the parliamentarians who have been highlighting the manner in which the deal is being weighed against India despite the Prime Minister's repeated assurances that there shall be no digression from the July 18, 2005 joint statement, and the scientists who have been toiling for a pittance at our nuclear establishments and have refused to cravenly applaud the deal as it stands are an unpatriotic lot. These are sad times indeed if we have to learn patriotism and patriotic values from a person who crawls without being asked to bend both at home and abroad. It is equally sad and tragic that media should applaud such perverse notions of patriotism: For instance, a national daily has described the Prime Minister's statement as "remarkable not for its content as much as the new political spunk behind it".

But if Mr Singh's statement, made after his meeting with US President George Bush at Heiligendamm, was astounding, the subsequent action of his Government, such as it is, was astonishing. It has set up a task force, headed by Mr K Subrahmanyam, who is in the forefront of those pushing the nuclear deal at any cost and hence meets Mr Singh's criterion of a "patriotic Indian". The other two members of the task force are also overtly pro-deal - Ms Arundhati Ghose, India's former Ambassador to the disarmament conference, and Mr Shyam Saran, former Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister's 'Special Envoy' on the nuclear deal. Despite his designated role, Mr Sharan has been elbowed out of the 123 Agreement talks by Mr Menon; insiders say that till the new assignment came up, the Prime Minister's 'Special Envoy' was busy working on India's strategic fuel requirements. Such mighty preoccupation, for the moment, will have to take a backseat.

Officially, the task force has been given the responsibility of formulating the "correct position" on key disarmament related issues like nuclear non-proliferation and fissile material controls. Those who have interacted with the task force say that discussions are primarily focussed on Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and connected issues that impinge on India's nuclear doctrine as well as posture. Understandably, the Ministry of External Affairs is miffed that such a task force should have been set up; after all, there is a disarmament division in the Ministry that has been dealing with CTBT and FMCT while sensitive issues related to India's nuclear doctrine and posture are long settled.

Two points have arisen from the interactions of the task force that merit the attention of Indians, especially those who are not "patriotic" enough to declare unconditional, unquestioning and unequivocal support for current form and content of the India-US nuclear deal. The first relates to the timing of setting up the task force and its agenda: Both coincide with the discussions on the text of the 123 Agreement entering a crucial phase. Do we really need to discuss disarmament related issues on a domestic forum at this point of time? And, to what purpose? The task force, more specifically Mr Subrahmanyam, is believed to have told security and strategic affairs specialists that India must revisit what are considered settled issues "in the light of new realities".

The second point relates to the "new realities", primarily obsessive American interest in controlling the future course of India's nuclear programme and thus influencing posture, apart from getting more than a toehold in India's nuclear establishments. Is an effort on to reorient standing policy on CTBT and FMCT? Till now, India's position, and this is the official line unless it is turned on its head after the task force is through with its exercise, has been that though we have co-sponsored both CTBT and FMCT, we are opposed to control regimes that are unfair, inequitable and lack effective international verification. The original purpose was to sign and join the high table; if there is no high table to join, then why should India agree to harsh control regimes? What is particularly obnoxious (for 'unpatriotic' Indians) is the US attempt to convert FMCT into an instrument of intrusive American verification from universally applicable effective international verification.

Alarmists, whose patriotic credentials I wouldn't dare question because they are unimpeachable, suggest that a surreptitious and sly effort is on, in keeping with the character of those who have arrogated to themselves the right to decide what is good for India although they lack the appropriate mandate to do so, to tamper with India's nuclear doctrine and posture. A task force member, during his interaction with a certain individual, insisted that neither nuclear doctrine nor posture has been codified as yet. Of course, that's bunkum, and he was politely told to refer to Government documents and a Press release issued on January 4, 2003 following a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security Affairs.

There is nothing innocently naïve about the task Mr Subrahmanyam has set for the team that is seeking to reopen closed issues in the "light of new realities". Just as there is nothing coincidental about the fact that he should head the task force set up at this juncture of discussions on the 123 Agreement, discussions in which India's Ambassador to Singapore, Mr S Jaishankar, an unabashed votary of the nuclear deal, routinely participates although he is accredited to a third Government. Mr Jaishankar happens to be Mr Subrahmanyam's son.

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Kanchan Gupta