NEW DELHI, 18 August 2006 — India said yesterday it would never bow to any US pressure over its civil nuclear deal but showed no enthusiasm for a “sense of the house” resolution on the subject as sought by the opposition.
Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said Parliament had already been taken into confidence about the nuclear agreement and said the government would only be bound by a bilateral pact, not any US laws.
“This government has a transparent approach. India will not accept any extra obligations (apart from the ones agreed to in the July 2005 statement),’” Sharma said told the upper house during an animated discussion on the nuclear deal.
“No legislation of any other Parliament will be binding on us. We will be bound only by a bilateral agreement on civil nuclear agreement with the US,” he asserted.
The Indian government would not be cowed by the US into changing the terms of their civilian nuclear deal, he said. “The prime minister has said India will not accept any additional conditionalities,” Sharma told Parliament, as opposition parties, the government’s own allies and atomic scientists joined a growing chorus against attempts by some US lawmakers to change the accord.
“Whatever agreement India will sign will be within the templates of the July 18 agreement and the March 2 agreement,” Sharma said, referring to two meetings between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush in Washington and New Delhi during which the deal was thrashed out.
Under the pact, India has agreed to open most of its atomic reactors to international inspection but is allowed to keep pre-selected military nuclear facilities out of public scrutiny. In return, India will be given unfettered access to previously forbidden nuclear technology to generate power to fuel its rapidly growing economy and cut back on its use of fossil fuels.
The minister was responding to Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former External Affairs Minister Yashwnat Sinha’s contention that New Delhi had quietly accepted departures from the 2005 statement signed by Manmohan and Bush. Sharma said the government would never compromise with India’s strategic nuclear weapons program that has run into criticism in the US.
“This government has a transparent approach. This is the third discussion in Parliament since the nuclear deal between India and the US last year,” he said. But Sharma did not accept the opposition’s increasingly shrill demand for a ‘sense of the house’ resolution on the controversial nuclear deal.
“A sense of the house” resolution, its advocates say, will send out a message loud and clear to the world that India will not lower its nuclear deterrent and compromise its nuclear program and pursue an independent foreign policy.
The Indo-US deal’s critics across the spectrum allege that it will make India’s indigenous nuclear program subservient to Washington’s strategic interests.
Not convinced by the government’s arguments, Sinha and Communist Part of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury made an impassioned pitch for such a resolution that will set the parameters for India’s negotiations with the US on the deal. Sinha also called a joint parliamentary committee to oversee the implementation of the resolution.
“We can’t remain mere spectators. India can’t bend to the will of the members of the US Congress,” Sinha asserted. “Departures have already been made from the July 2005 statement. The government has accepted a watertight separation plan that does not apply to nuclear weapon states. We have accepted the safeguards agreement in perpetuity,” he alleged.
“Above all, reciprocity and non-discrimination, the highest pillars of the July 2005 agreement, have been turned on their head,’ Sinha added. Yechury questioned the very rationale of the civil nuclear agreement and said if it was meant to promote energy security, then the government was working on “fundamentally flawed” premises.
