Former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie gave a clause-by-clause critique of the IAEA draft, the main charge being that "far from it being an India-specific agreement, the accord resembles IAEA agreements with non-nuclear weapon states".
They accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of flouting his own assurances to Parliament. "With the exclusion of the first two pages that contain the preamble, and a couple of other exceptions, the text is largely modeled on IAEA safeguards agreements with non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). As sought by the United States, the text of the India-IAEA accord has been drawn from the strengthened information circular -66/Rev.2 (16 September 1968) model for NNWS," said Shourie.
"The India-IAEA safeguards accord comes with perpetual, legally irrevocable obligations which India cannot suspend or end, even if the supplier states cut off supply of fuel and replacement parts," he added.
"The draft agreement is word-for-word, para-for-para what the US administration had wanted. India has not only stringent routine inspections with access at all times, but also special inspections," said Shourie.
Sinha added that this was worse than the North Korean case where the board had approved the special inspections which the Pyongyang refused to allow. But India, in its own accord with the IAEA, had agreed to be subject to special inspections with the board's prior consent, he said.
The two leaders said that under clauses 34 and 39-42, India had agreed to supply design information as soon as it made a decision to build or modify a facility.
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"Under clauses 117 and 127, not just 14 reactors, but in addition, 21 other institutions and sites, including, in particular, research and development facilities, will be placed under safeguards," said Sinha.
"This means that while five established nuclear powers have offered only 11 facilities in total, which is less than one per cent of their total facilities, for IAEA safeguards, India has agreed to place 35 of its facilities under IAEA inspections," they added.
These facilities include 14 power reactors, three heavy water plants at Thal-Vaishet, Hazira and Tuticorin, six installations at the nuclear fuel complex in Hyderabad, the PREFRE reprocessing plant at Tarapur and nine research facilities, such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
The two ex-ministers said that India's right to take corrective measures in terms of disruption of fuel supplies was only mentioned in the preamble and was not part of the agreement. "There is no arbitration allowed in case of disruption," they added.