Islamabad: The US-India nuclear deal is facing problems on three fronts whereas developments will certainly impact India adversely in the civil nuclear technology acquisition field.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Strategic Technology Resources (STR) Dr. Shireen Mazari said this while discussion with journalists at National Press Club, Islamabad on Saturday.
She said that Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) decision actually came into existence as a result of the 1974 Indian nuclear test. For the record, she said since then the NSG has sought to ensure that sensitive nuclear technology should remain under tight controls and should be available only to states that are party of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“The US had to alter this condition, in order to accommodate India into the NSG,” she added.
Dr. Mazari told the meeting that the results of the NSG meeting held in Netherlands in June this year shocked India and seemed that the NSG was not willing to accept India as a member of its Cartel when it does not fulfill the basic criteria required for this membership.
She said that more distressing for the India was that when NSG asked her to put further controls on the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies.
The Indians, she said , were also traumatized to find that the NSG not only refused to grant India membership by waiving the NPT requirement but also tightened up its export controls especially in relation to exports of ENR technologies to the nations which are not signatories to the NPT and do not have full-scope safeguards.
She stated that a bill was introduced in US congress that seeks to amend the US Atomic Energy Act under which the Indo-US Agreement was made possible. She said that it also seeks some other critical conditions to be placed on any civil nuclear deal the US may sign with another country.
She said within India itself, there are growing problems that India has very stringent accident liability laws – a result of the Bhopal Union Carbide tragedy, which could result in nuclear power companies not the Indian government paying out billions in compensation in case of an accident.
She added that US Foreign Minister Hillary Clinton took up this issue with the Indians on her recent visit there where she asked that the accident liability law should be watered down – this is keeping the US private sector away from the $150 billion Indian atomic power market.
US officials see this as a major problem, added Dr. Mazari that the US is pressing India into acceding to the international Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for nuclear damage.
Even it is too early to declare that the Indo-US nuclear deal is unraveling, she stressed it is recently the case that actual operationalization of the deal is not proceeding as smoothly as anticipated.
She added that it would be difficult for the US and the supplier Cartels to move in the direction being sought by the US and India.
Meanwhile, she said for Pakistan time has come to insist on its role as a viable player in civil nuclear trade within the scope of IAEA safeguards.
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