By IANS
Washington : Over 20 American groups have launched a campaign to stop the deal under which US is to provide India with civilian nuclear fuel and technology, arguing New Delhi would use it to bolster its atomic weapons capability.
The groups under the aegis of Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade said Tuesday the US-India civilian nuclear agreement would also “dangerously weaken” non-proliferation efforts, embolden Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and exacerbate a nuclear arms race in Asia.
US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reached an agreement in 2006 in which Washington would provide India with nuclear fuel and technology even though a nuclear-armed India has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The agreement requires India to place selected atomic facilities under international safeguards and to get a green light from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, a global regulator of nuclear commerce. The US Congress has to clear the operating agreement together with safeguards.
The 23 US groups opposed to the deal are drawn from arms control experts, environmental activists, consumer advocates, religious groups and doctors. They said they would educate the US Congress and public about the dangers of the deal, and to working with experts and organisations in many countries to inform deliberation over the deal within the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and its member state governments.
John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World, one of the groups, said: “When Congress takes a close look at the Bush administration’s proposed agreement, it will find a dangerous, unprecedented deal.
“The proposal undermines over 30 years of non-proliferation policy, will increase India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons and its stockpile of nuclear weapons-material, and sends the wrong message to Pakistan during a time of crisis in that country,” he said.
The deal “will ultimately be rejected for the sake of preserving national security and global stability,” Isaacs added.
The US Congress amended US law in December 2006 to create a rare exception for India from some of the requirements of the US Atomic Energy Act, which prohibits nuclear sales to non-NPT signatories. Washington had stopped nuclear cooperation with India after the latter conducted its first nuclear test in 1974.
Left-wing parties in India have also been opposed to the accord, fearing it may threaten India’s nuclear weapons programme and allow US intervention in its foreign policy.