By IANS
New Delhi : With parliament set to debate the nuclear deal, a group of former defence, civil and foreign service officials have written an open letter to MPs stressing that India will be “more vulnerable” strategically if it did not approve the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.
“We believe India is more vulnerable to foreign pressures without this agreement than we would be by increasing our strength through an intelligent use of it to put through various development programmes which currently falter,” said the letter issued Wednesday.
The signatories to the two-page letter include former Indian Air Force chief Arjan Singh, former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) head K. Kasturirangan, former Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chief adviser K. Santhanam, former home secretaries N.N. Vohra and B.D. Deshmukh, former commerce secretary Abid Hussain, former foreign secretaries M.K. Rasgotra, K. Raghunath and Lalit Mansingh, strategic expert K. Subrahmanyam and former ambassadors K. Shankar Bajpai, Satish Lamba and Arundhati Ghose.
The letter said that a “major obstacle” in India’s path toward becoming a major influential global power was “denial of high technologies particularly those related to security needs, which have enabled some self-selected powers to forge well ahead of us”.
It noted that such “crippling constraints” was even imposed by “friends who have previously helped us”. “We cannot, for instance, get Russian reactors without proceeding with the Indo-US agreement,” the letter said.
The Indo-US nuclear deal, the letter contended, could “be the basis of agreement with the international community” for removing sanctions on dual use technologies.
“Existing constraints can only be removed through an agreement with those who impose them, which this accord makes possible.”
While it admitted that the deal was not “perfect”, the letter pointed out that all international agreements were a result of negotiation and compromise. “All too often in our history we have suffered by insisting on the ideally desirable and rejecting what is attainable.”
In response to criticism that the deal would make India subservient to the US, the letter said since international relationships were shaped by strength, “the stronger you are the greater your freedom of action.
“This agreement should be viewed as an instrument for making us that stronger power, confident of itself and of the respect of others, that counts more and more in the world, and can do more for its people,” it said.