NEW DELHI, 12 December 2006 — As the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement is just a signature away from becoming a law, opposition against it has intensified at home. In Washington, the formal ceremony for President George W. Bush’s signature earlier scheduled for yesterday has been postponed to later this week.
Also, the government’s communist allies do not support the landmark deal, they said yesterday, criticizing conditions attached by the US Congress. Political analysts said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should still be able to force the deal through Parliament, but criticism from both his left-wing partners and the main right-wing opposition party implied stormy weather ahead.
Legislation to allow the United States to sell nuclear technology to India sailed through Congress on Saturday, ending three decades of isolation imposed after New Delhi developed nuclear weapons in contravention of international standards. The deal has caught the imagination of many in India. But it has also attracted criticism, which has mounted after it was modified in the US legislature.
The Hindu fundamentalist opposition called the deal “humiliating” on Sunday and said it should be rejected, arguing Washington wanted to cap India’s nuclear weapons program.
Yesterday India’s communists, who support the government but remain outside the ruling coalition, also rejected the conditions attached to the deal.
“Once again the goalposts have been shifted,” the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said in a statement. “This cannot be accepted by India as it negates the most significant, if not all, assurances made by the prime minister to the Indian Parliament.” Manmohan, who first struck the deal with President Bush in 2005, defused criticism earlier this year by promising Parliament he would not accept significant amendments. He may have to go back to the house again.
“An agreement on this basis will seriously undermine the pursuit of an independent foreign policy,” the CPI-M added.
Communists said negotiations on a detailed bilateral pact on nuclear cooperation should be suspended until there had been a full debate in Parliament.
Under the legislation passed by Congress, the US president would be required to end the export of nuclear materials if India tests another nuclear device as it did in 1998.
The US president is also required to report to Congress annually on whether India was cooperating with international efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear program.
Critics say the bill has also failed to guarantee uninterrupted fuel supplies for civilian reactors, imposed intrusive foreign scrutiny of nuclear facilities and prevented India from reprocessing spent fuel.
But the Times of India said critics had missed the point and predicted the hardest part of the complex negotiation and approvals process was now over.
“The deal could well go down as one of the greatest foreign policy achievements of both the Bush and Manmohan Singh governments,” it said in an editorial.
“This deal makes New Delhi a full-fledged nuclear power...which means there are fewer constraints to India’s ambitions to become a superpower.”
Nevertheless, political analyst Pran Chopra said the conditions attached by Congress would take the gloss off the deal as far as Indian public opinion was concerned.
