By Manish Chand, IANS
New Delhi : Two years to the day Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W Bush agreed on a path-breaking civil nuclear cooperation agreement, the international community has come to accept it as a unique deal-in-the-making that tacitly recognises India’s growing weight in global affairs.
And as top officials from the two countries hold talks in the US capital to seal the chequered deal Tuesday, they will hope to finally banish some of the old fears that continue to haunt conservative opinion on both sides of the fence.
When Manmohan Singh and Bush signed a joint statement on a balmy afternoon in Washington D.C. on July 18, 2005, taking people in both countries and much of the world by surprise, there were widespread concerns in both countries.
Many Indians were worried that that the country had unwittingly signed away its nuclear independence to the world’s pre-eminent power. And the US was convulsed by a furious debate with conservative critics lamenting that it was the end of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) regime as they knew it.
The Bush administration, argued powerful non-proliferation hawks, was bending too many rules to accommodate a nuclear pariah that had defiantly refused to join the NPT.
The 2005 joint statement was a document of intent that entailed a set of reciprocal duties and obligations with a view to achieving “full civil nuclear cooperation” between India and the US – a country that has denied New Delhi access to nuclear technology and fuel for nearly three decades.
“What this agreement says is – things change, times change, that leadership can make a difference,” said Bush, with Manmohan Singh by his side.
“I am trying to think differently, not to stay stuck in the past, and recognise that by thinking differently, particularly on nuclear power, we can achieve some important objectives,” Bush said.
“We have made history today, and I thank you,” replied Manmohan Singh.
It’s been hard going since then for both leaders to convince their critics of the importance of the deal.
“We are very firm in our determination that agreement with US on civil nuclear energy in no way affects the requirements of our strategic programme,” Manmohan Singh assured parliament last year.
“What we are attempting today is to put in place new international arrangements that would overturn three decades of iniquitous restrictions,” he stressed.
Two years on, even as Indian and US negotiators sit down to resolve the last of the critical obstacles blocking a bilateral nuclear pact between them, doubters and critics remain on both sides – but an increasingly wary international community has come to accept that this is a unique deal and a tacit recognition of India’s growing weight in global affairs.
July 18, in Prime Minister’s Special Envoy Shyam Saran’s words, marks “our determination to put behind us an era of defensive diplomacy” to match India’s growing aspirations as an emerging world power that desires a permanent seat on the UN high table.
In India, the leftist parties, key partners of the ruling coalition, who were the most vocal critics of the deal, still have their reservations, but it’s no longer a make-or-break issue with them.
Key leftist leaders have said that they will not upset the nuclear cart as long as the final agreement sticks to the July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 separation plan that entailed New Delhi placing 14 of its civilian nuclear reactors under international safeguards.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the chief opposition, it is more a matter of ownership problem. For it was the BJP-led NDA government that first initiated civil nuclear talks but had to give up after it was thrown out of power in the summer of 2004. Its leaders cannot stomach their principal rival claiming credit for this deal.
In the US, too, it’s no longer the nuclear deal that is in question, but more a question of accommodating Indian demands such as letting it retain its sovereign option of conducting a nuclear test and allowing it reprocessing rights.
Clearly, there is now a growing acceptance that both sides have to pay a price for this wide-ranging transformation of ties between two hitherto estranged democracies. The real issue now is that the price has to be reasonable – and be seen to be reasonable.
This is the spirit in which the two sides are currently trying to break a persistent deadlock over India’s right to reprocess US-origin spent fuel – an issue that has considerable historical baggage behind it.
For India, it’s a return of old Tarapur fears – the US terminated fuel supplies to Tarapur reactors, built by American companies, after India conducted a nuclear test in 1974. The US also refused India permission to reprocess spent fuel.
If this issue is resolved at this week’s talks, the long-stalled 123 agreement could well become a reality by the end of the year, fulfilling the July 18 promise of allowing India to resume global civil nuclear commerce and enter a new nuclear order.