Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales

QueEx · Jan 27, 2006

India Beefs with U.S.

<font size="5"><center>India Protests U.S. Nuke Statement</font size></center>

Washington Post
By ASHOK SHARMA
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 26, 2006; 10:17 AM

NEW DELHI -- India on Thursday protested a suggestion by the U.S. ambassador that a landmark nuclear deal between the two countries would fall apart unless New Delhi backed Washington's effort to bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council because of its atomic program.

Under the deal signed in July, Washington is to share civilian nuclear technology and supply nuclear fuel to India in return for New Delhi separating its civilian and military nuclear programs and allowing international inspections of its atomic facilities.

But U.S. Ambassador David Mulford said Wednesday that if India does not vote next month to refer Tehran to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions, it would be "devastating" to the deal currently before the U.S. Congress.

"I think the Congress will simply stop considering the matter," Mulford told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The pact "will die in the Congress," Mulford said.

The State Department said the envoy was speaking for himself.

India Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told Mulford at a meeting Thursday that the remarks "were inappropriate and not conducive to building a strong partnership between our two independent democracies," the External Affairs Ministry said in statement.

Mulford's unusually frank comments came as Washington intensifies efforts to win support at the International Atomic Energy Agency for its plan use the Security Council to pressure Iran to end its nuclear program. The IAEA board, on which India sits, is due to meet Feb. 2 to discuss Iran. India has long-standing ties with Iran.

U.S. Embassy spokesman David Kennedy confirmed that Saran and Mulford met Thursday but could not provide any details of their talks.

But India's Foreign Ministry quoted Saran as telling Mulford: "India's vote on any possible resolution on the Iran nuclear issue at the IAEA would be determined by India's own judgment of the merits of the case."

A referral to the Security Council could lead to economic and political sanctions against Iran. The United States and European powers fear Tehran could use its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons. Iran insists its program is only for generating electricity.

European countries believe they have enough votes at the IAEA to bring Iran before the Security Council. But they are seeking support from Russia, China and key developing nations, including India.

Although New Delhi agrees with Washington that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, it has pushed a softer line, urging negotiations with Tehran.

New Delhi voted in September with the United States and European powers on an earlier IAEA resolution that could have led to Iran's referral to the council.

But the Indian government faced fierce domestic criticism over the move from its left-wing political allies, who accused it of selling out a longtime ally to curry favor with Washington. New Delhi has, in recent weeks, appeared hesitant to repeat the vote, instead urging negotiations with Tehran.

"We have made it known to (India) that we would very much like India's support because India has arrived on the world stage and is a very important player in the world," Mulford said Wednesday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600835.html

QueEx · Jan 27, 2006

Re: India Beefs with U.S.

<font size="4"><center>
"If you want to run with the big dogs,
you have to stop pissing with the puppies"</font size></center>

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<A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4654884.stm">link</A>

</IFRAME>

QueEx · Mar 3, 2006

<font size="6"><center>Bush and India Reach Pact </font size><font size="5">
That Allows Nuclear Sales </font size></center>

President Bush watched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice walk through a receiving line at a state
dinner in New Delhi Thursday. The president is on his first visit to India, and to continue on to Pakistan tonight.

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 3, 2006

NEW DELHI, March 2 — President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced here on Thursday what Mr. Bush called a "historic" nuclear pact that would help India satisfy its enormous civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.

Under the agreement, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections. The pact fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July.

In Washington, Democratic and Republican critics said that India's willingness to subject some of its nuclear program to inspections was meaningless so long as the country had a secret military nuclear program alongside it, and that the pact would only encourage rogue nations like North Korea and Iran to continue to pursue nuclear weapons. They predicted a bruising fight in Congress over the pact, which needs its approval.

At the same time, Mr. Bush said he was going forward with a trip on Friday night to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to meet with the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, despite a bombing Thursday morning outside a Marriott Hotel and the United States Consulate in Karachi. The bombing, a suspected suicide attack, left four dead, including an American Embassy employee.

"Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference with Mr. Singh. "My trip to Pakistan is an important trip. It's important to talk with President Musharraf about continuing our fight against terrorists. After all, he has had a direct stake in this fight; four times the terrorists have tried to kill him."

In New Delhi, American and Indian negotiators working all night reached agreement on the nuclear deal at 10:30 a.m. Thursday local time — only two hours before Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced it — after the United States accepted an Indian plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.

In the plan, India agreed permanently to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities, meaning those reactors will be subject for the first time to international inspections or safeguards.

The other reactors, as well as a prototype fast-breeder reactor in the early stages of development, will remain as military facilities, and not be subject to inspections. India also retained the right to develop future fast-breeder reactors for its military program, a provision that critics of the deal called astonishing. In addition, India said it was guaranteed a permanent supply of nuclear fuel.

The separation plan, according to a senior Indian official, also envisions India-specific rules from the International Atomic Energy Agency, effectively recognizing India as a nuclear weapons state in "a category of its own."

Both sides appeared eager to announce the agreement as the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's first visit to India, and did so with few details at a triumphal news conference on the lush grounds of Hyderabad House, a former princely residence in the heart of this capital. But Mr. Bush acknowledged that the deal now faced a difficult battle for approval in Congress that would entail a change in American law.

"We concluded an historic agreement today on nuclear power," Mr. Bush said, with Mr. Singh at his side. "It's not an easy job for the prime minister to achieve this agreement, I understand. It's not easy for the American president to achieve this agreement. But it's a necessary agreement. It's one that will help both our peoples."

Speaking of Congress, he added: "Some people just don't want to change and change with the times. But this agreement is in our interest."

Indians hailed the agreement as historic and highly advantageous for their country.

"It offers access to civilian nuclear energy, it protects your strategic program, and it mainstreams India," said Amitabh Mattoo, vice chancellor of Jammu University. "India couldn't have hoped for a better deal."

Critics also said keeping the fast-breeder reactors under military control, without inspections, would allow India to develop far more nuclear arms, and more quickly, than it has in the past. Fast-breeder reactors are highly efficient producers of the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

"It's not meaningful to talk about 14 of the 22 reactors being placed under safeguards," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who served as a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and the early days of the Bush administration. "What's meaningful is what the Indians can do at the unsafeguarded reactors, which is vastly increase their production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. One has to assume that the administration was so interested in concluding a deal that it was prepared to cave in to the demands of the Indian nuclear establishment."

Critics of the deal also said it would now be more difficult for the United States to persuade Iran and other nations to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.

"It will set a precedent that Iran will use to argue that the United States has a double standard," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a leading opponent of the deal. "You can't break the rules and expect Iran to play by them, and that's what President Bush is doing today."

Administration officials in New Delhi countered that India was a responsible nuclear power and had earned the right to the nuclear energy technology that it urgently needs for a booming economy and its population of one billion.

"India is unique," R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi.

Mr. Burns, the administration's point man in the nuclear talks, added: "It has developed its entire nuclear program over 30 years alone because it had been isolated. So the question we faced was the following: Is it better to maintain India in isolation, or is it better to try to bring it into the international mainstream? And President Bush felt the latter."

The deal was praised by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This agreement is an important step towards satisfying India's growing need for energy, including nuclear technology and fuel, as an engine for development.," he said in a statement. "It would also bring India closer as an important partner in the nonproliferation regime."

President Jacques Chirac of France also offered his blessings late Thursday, calling India "a responsible power" and saying access to civilian nuclear energy would help India "respond to its immense energy needs while limiting its emissions of greenhouse gases," Agence France-Presse reported.

At the news conference, Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced additional cooperative agreements on counterterrorism, fighting AIDS in India and trade, including the importing to the United States of Indian mangoes, considered by connoisseurs to be among the best in the world.

"And oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes," Mr. Bush said at the news conference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03prexy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

QueEx · Mar 3, 2006

QueEx · Mar 11, 2006

QueEx · Apr 15, 2006

darius_janus · Apr 15, 2006

fucking bush man i hope he dies. i don't know about India too. nuclear deals??

QueEx · Oct 11, 2008

QueEx · May 18, 2013

QueEx/BBC NEWS said:
Chinese papers accuse the US of double standards on the
nuclear issue, and one believes Bush has "disregarded his
own anti-proliferation duties" in order to use India as a
safeguard against increasing Chinese influence.

After Fighting Over Mountains, India and
China Lock Horns in the Indian Ocean

Chinese paramilitary police march past the gates of the
Indian embassy in Beijing on May 9, 2013

In mid-April, a platoon of Chinese soldiers trooped some 20 km into territory considered India’s and pitched tents and unfurled banners. When detected by Indian forces, the Chinese refused to leave, triggering a tense three-week standoff between the two Asian giants that ended only after both sides backed down from their windswept Himalayan posts and returned to the pre-existing status quo. The incident was the most dramatic flare-up between India and China in recent years, the latest reminder of how things can heat up along a vast, snowbound border that has for decades remained in dispute.

Top officials in both New Delhi and Beijing tried to play down what happened. Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid described the border tensions as “acne” on the otherwise “beautiful face” of Sino-Indian relations. On a recent trip to Beijing, Khurshid insisted both countries “were on the same page” and “don’t have prickly issues of significant difference” regarding the unsettled border. Ahead of newly installed Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s May 19 visit to India — his maiden foreign mission — the two countries have made conciliatory noises over resolving the thorny issue of the border, even though over a dozen rounds of talks have failed to achieve any real progress. In a measure to build trust, the two countries laid plans during the standoff to hold joint military exercises for the first time in five years.

The Indian government described the incident as “localized,” which suggests that it was the fault of an errant Chinese official or local military commander, and not that of Beijing. Official talking points in both capitals tend to emphasize shared economic interests — annual bilateral trade is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015. Why should colonial-era quibbles over glaciers and desolate mountain passes get in the way?

But while the Indian and Chinese governments have grown accustomed to managing a conflict frozen on the roof of the world, a whole new terrain of contest is emerging far away from the Himalayas: the Indian Ocean. An Indian Defense Ministry report published last month warned of the “grave threat” posed by an emboldened Chinese navy in India’s maritime backyard. China’s rapidly expanding submarine fleet — it counts 45 such vessels to India’s 14 — has widened its orbit of patrols beyond Chinese territorial waters. The “implicit focus” of China’s navy, the report suggests, is to jockey for control of “highly sensitive sea lines of communication” in the Indian Ocean. Last year alone, the Indian Defense Ministry documented 22 “contacts” in the Indian Ocean with vessels suspected to be Chinese attack submarines on extended patrol.

These concerns add to an existing paranoia in the Indian media of China’s “string of pearls” — an array of ports, listening posts and naval bases that Beijing is supposedly setting up in countries around the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in a bid to encircle India. China has a stake in naval facilities in Burma, Bangladesh, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka and most notably in India’s old foe, Pakistan, where the Chinese-built port at Gwadar has furrowed many a brow in New Delhi. Chinese state companies are also developing key strategic ports in East Africa, including Lamu in Kenya and Bagamoyo in Tanzania. The day may not be too far off when a Chinese aircraft carrier makes routine pit stops at cities along the Indian Ocean littoral.

China’s naval presence in the Indian Ocean began in earnest in 2006, when Chinese vessels joined the international task force aimed at curbing Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden and securing pivotal global shipping routes. Much of China’s booming economy is fueled by oil shipped from the Persian Gulf, through the Indian Ocean, and Beijing policymakers see the necessity of securing sea-lanes and access beyond the Strait of Malacca. It’s a typically realist posture, one which can be gleaned from the first ever Chinese “Blue Book” on India — a semiofficial policy document — published this month. It says New Delhi is preparing for the eventuality of a “two-front war” with China and Pakistan and notes the developing strength of India’s blue-water navy. It warns, as the Chinese often do, of the inherent instabilities of India’s democracy, which could lead to further tensions.

Many Indian strategists do seem to accept now that China’s widening naval scope is a natural consequence of its growing global presence; its expanding operations are that of any budding power seeking to safeguard far-flung economic interests. “There’s a maturation of Indian thought on the string of pearls,” says Jeff Smith, an expert on Sino-Indian relations at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. “Many recognize now that these are genuine [Chinese] commercial interests. The biggest reason India is also looking seaward is its own growth.”

But the parallel rise of China and India is still taking the world into uncharted waters. Theorists and analysts squint back at the era of Great Game rivalries, pointing to the now in-vogue writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, a 19th century American naval officer and geostrategist who has become popular in both New Delhi and Beijing.

Mahan championed the need for a state to protect its merchant fleets with robust naval power — the blueprint for global domination used by the British Empire and later the U.S. But if China and India follow that same path, they’ll surely bump up against each other. Away from China’s expansion into the Indian Ocean, India has caused alarm in Beijing by stepping up its economic interests in the South China Sea and military ties with Vietnam, the main rival claimant to a body of water Beijing considers its sovereign territory. “Neither [India nor China] is really capable yet of operating in each other’s backyards,” says Smith. But the current course of action suggests further tensions may lie ahead.

In Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, a book published in late 2012 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, veteran Indian geopolitical analyst C. Raja Mohan deploys a parable from ancient Hindu mythology to explain the current strategic conundrum between China and India. Rival gods and demons churn the oceans in search of heavenly ambrosia, but the process yields poison. It takes the subtle interventions of the Lord Vishnu to first deal with the poison and then help manage the discovery of ambrosia.

In Raja Mohan’s metaphor, Vishnu ought to be interpreted as the U.S., still the dominant power in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But it remains unclear to what extent Washington, burdened with shrinking defense budgets and complex relationships with both China and India, could or would want to smooth out the hard edges of Sino-Indian competition. It’s certain that such a role would be unwelcome not just in Beijing, but also New Delhi, where policymakers have no desire to be drawn into the orbit of a Western superpower. And American ambivalence was on display last month as well. “Through the whole border dispute, there was not one word mentioned out of Washington,” says Smith. It’ll be up to Indian and Chinese politicos to make sure the geopolitical churn of the Indian Ocean doesn’t become poisonous.

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Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales

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