By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : As India and the US make renewed efforts to conclude their civil nuclear deal, four US critics of the accord have asked the Bush administration to make public its responses to lawmakers’ questions about it.
The four in a statement Wednesday asked the State Department to drop a virtual “gag” order on its unclassified responses to over 40 questions sent to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last October.
“The administration’s responses should be made publicly available so that US and Indian lawmakers and the public can evaluate whether the draft US-Indian accord conforms to the terms and conditions established by Congress,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (ACA).
“The administration’s unwillingness to make their answers more widely available suggests they have something to hide from either US or Indian legislators,” he said.
Joining him were two former senior non-proliferation officials, Fred McGoldrick and Henry Sokolski, and Sharon Squassoni, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The State Department said the US-India civil nuclear agreement complied fully with US law and the administration had provided extensive briefings to Congress on the matter, including public testimony by top State Department officials.
“We’ve handled answers to sensitive questions in an appropriate way that responds to congressional concerns. We’re going to continue with that approach,” State Department spokesperson Tom Casey said.
According to the ACA, questions the House committee asked the State Department to answer included:
* Will the government terminate nuclear trade with India if it resumes testing?
* Whether the US intends to transfer sensitive nuclear technology through the agreement, or outside the agreement that can be used to make nuclear weapons material?
* Will the new safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) apply in perpetuity as called for in law, or be subject to unspecified “corrective actions” as India demands?
* Will the government be legally required to help India secure nuclear fuel supplies from other states even if nuclear cooperation is suspended?
“Given that the administration’s answers are not classified, they should be willing to share them with all members of the Congress and with the public,” said Fred McGoldrick, former director of non-proliferation and export policy at the State Department.
“This proposed agreement with India will have profound and adverse consequences for the international non-proliferation regime. The draft text contains numerous ambiguities, and the Congress and the public need to know how the administration interprets various provisions in the text,” he said.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre, said: “Sitting on the answers to these questions is no way to clear the air on the deal’s controversial provisions, which the Indian public is rightly worried about.”
“The proposed nuclear cooperation agreement papers over key differences between Washington and New Delhi, such as whether nuclear cooperation would be cut off if India tests a nuclear device,” said Sharon Squassoni.
For months, Indian officials have insisted that they seek full nuclear cooperation, including access to uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies, which can be used to produce nuclear bomb material.
They also have sought to secure nuclear fuel supply guarantees and multi-year fuel reserves to give India the option to resume testing without penalty, the ACA said.
“As a result, the agreement contains undefined terms, and unorthodox approaches which make it unlike any other agreement the United States had previously signed. All members of the Congress and the public deserve to see the administration’s responses to the many questions about the Indian nuclear deal,” Squassoni said
Indian officials have also made contradictory statements about the relevance of the restrictions and conditions on nuclear trade in the Hyde Act and international nuclear trade with India, the arms control lobby said.
“Clear responses about the proposed Indian nuclear trade deal are needed now, not later, because decisions may soon be taken by other nuclear supplier states that could undermine non-proliferation law and policy,” Kimball said.