The nuclear energy agreement between the US and India would be a “nonproliferation disaster” and the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) must reject the accord without further safeguards, arms control advocates said.
India continues to produce fissile material and expand its nuclear arsenal, academics, former diplomats and non-governmental organisations said in a letter on Friday to the member countries.
The accord “fails to bring India further into conformity with the nonproliferation behaviour” and the NSG must “support measures that would avert further damage to the already beleaguered global non-proliferation and disarmament regime,” the group said in the letter, posted on the Web site of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
The 2005 accord, signed by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and endorsed by the Parliament last month, would give India access to civil nuclear technology and allow it to import nuclear materials without joining the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The United Nations atomic agency earlier this month endorsed a plan for inspections of India’s nuclear plants, a crucial step toward implementing the accord.
The treaty must also secure the backing of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which meets in Vienna August 21. The US Congress then needs to ratify the accord.
Export Restrictions
The NSG, chaired by Germany, needs to vote unanimously for lifting export restrictions against India for the treaty to progress, Raja Mohan, an analyst on Indian security and professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technical University, said earlier this month.
China, some European countries and New Zealand resist the deal because they oppose supplying nuclear technology to atomic weapons states outside the NPT, he said.
The accord would give India “rights and privileges of civil nuclear trade that have been reserved only for members in good standing under the NPT,” the group said. “It creates a dangerous distinction between ‘good’ proliferators and ‘bad’ proliferators and sends out misleading signals to the international community with regard to NPT norms.”
The letter is signed by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, former US, Canadian and Australian ambassadors and NGOs from more than 20 countries, according to the Arms Control Association, which organised the letter with the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre.
If the NSG allows nuclear trade with India, it must set conditions, according to the letter. Trade must stop if India resumes nuclear testing and the transfer of plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment equipment, which could be used for bomb-making, should be banned, it said.
