'N-deal will curb India's flexibility'

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has expressed concern over the joint Indo-US statement of July 18 regarding nuclear technology. Vajpayee said today the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) "shares the fears and concerns" of nuclear scientists and defence analysts on this issue.

Vajpayee's main fear is the separation of civil and nuclear military establishments under this agreement. "This offer has long-term national security implications," the former Prime Minister said.

"The military programmes are a small portion of our nuclear facilities. We believe that separating the civilian use from the military use will be difficult, if not impossible," he added.

The former Prime Minister also said the costs that this exercise would involve would also be prohibitive.

"It will also deny us any flexibility in determining the size of our nuclear deterrent," he said.

"Though we believe in a minimum credible deterrent, the size of the deterrent must be determined from time to time on the basis of our own threat perception," he added.

Vajpayee claimed that this determination was part of India's sovereign right and that it should "not be surrendered to anyone else".

The former Prime Minister also said by effecting a separation between civilian and military facilities, "we have also accepted a crucial provision of a future fissile material cut-off treaty even before such an international treaty has been negotiated and put into force by other nuclear-weapons states".

The offer, according to Vajpayee, to sign and adhere to an additional protocol with respect to civilian nuclear facilities, is also fraught with danger.

"Such an additional protocol will, by its very nature, be more intrusive since it will have to allow international inspectors free access to our nuclear activities, anywhere anytime," the Prime Minister said.

Vajpayee was wary that the treaty would curb the freedom that Indian scientists enjoyed as far as their research activities were concerned.

"Indian nuclear scientists have been allowed all these years to freely carry out research activities without anyone breathing down their necks. Under the new arrangement, this will change and put restrictions even on our research programmes," he said.

"Of special interest to us is the thorium research programme, which will give us freedom from nuclear fuel imports and make us self-reliant in nuclear fuel," he said. "What happens to the programme? The government of India owes an explanation on this count."

He said there were also "other issues on which the US commitment could have been more forthright, like the International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and the Generation IV International Forum."

"In fact," said Vajpayee, "it is difficult to resist the feeling that while India has made long-term and specific commitments in the Joint Statement, the US has merely made promises which it may not be able to get through either in the US Congress or its friends in the exclusive nuclear club."

"The Bush administration may have recognised India as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology. It is far from recognising India as a legitimate and responsible nuclear-weapons state," he said.