I.
Media Release
9 September 2008
US-India Nuclear Agreement:
Peace Groups Protest Japanese Government's Capitulation in NSG
[Tokyo, 9 September 2008]
Attached is a translation of a statement by Japanese peace groups
protesting the Japanese Government's September 6 approval of an
exemption for India from the nuclear export guidelines of the 45-nation
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The statement was handed to the Arms
Control and Disarmament Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at
3pm today.
A cover letter addressed to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Foreign
Minister Masahiko Koumura demanded an explanation of the government's
decision, which threatens to destroy the international
non-proliferation system, based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The groups stated that in the near future they will submit further
questions and requested a meeting with a government representative.
They demanded an explanation of the background and reasons for the
government's decision and the impact of the decision on the prospects
for nuclear disarmament.
Contact
Philip White Work Phone: +81-3-3357-3800 ¡¡Home Phone: +81-3-3708-2898
International Liaison Officer, Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
c/- Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, Tokyo, Japan
Tel: 81-3-3357-3800 Fax: 81-3-3357-3801 Email 1: white@...
Web Site:
http://cnic.jp/english/topics/plutonium/proliferation/usindia.html
------------
Statement Concerning an Amendment to NSG Guidelines Granting an
Exemption for India
After extending its deliberations by one day to September 6, an
extraordinary meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) finally
agreed to amend its guidelines to allow a special exception for India.
The amendment exempts India from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
requirement that countries may only engage in nuclear trade if they
accept International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full-scope safeguards,
despite the fact that India developed nuclear weapons outside the NPT
framework. This decision risks shaking the foundations of the NPT
system and is therefore totally unacceptable.
Circumstances evolved rapidly after the agreement between Indian Prime
Minister Singh and US President Bush at the July Toyako G8 Summit to
expedite the US-India Nuclear Agreement. On August 1 the IAEA Board of
Governors approved a safeguards agreement covering some of India's
nuclear facilities. Then on August 21,22 the NSG held an extraordinary
plenary meeting to consider whether to exempt India from its ban on
nuclear trade with countries that have not accepted full-scope IAEA
safeguards. Strong objections were raised by countries including
Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland,
so the NSG reconvened on September 4 and 5. The meeting was extended to
September 6, but regrettably, as a result of strong pressure from the
US, an amendment to NSG Guidelines was finally passed granting an
exemption for India.
Despite the history of the atomic bombing, the government of Japan
accepted the US-India Nuclear Agreement, which affords exceptional
treatment for India, without even making an effort to minimize the blow
to the NPT system. In doing so, it ignored statements issued by groups
representing Hibakusha (A-bomb sufferers) living in both Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, by the Mayors of both these cities, by the Governors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Prefectures, by local councils and prefectural
assemblies, as well as the united calls of Hibakusha groups, nuclear
disarmament groups and other peace groups throughout Japan which for
years have been striving for nuclear disarmament. The government also
ignored recent cross-party expressions of opposition by Members of the
Japanese Diet. As citizens of the country that was attacked by nuclear
weapons, we are overwhelmed with shame that we have such a government.
Together with people who fought with us for nuclear disarmament and
non-proliferation on this occasion, we demand a convincing explanation
from the government of its behavior in the NSG. Since there are many US
Congress Members who have expressed opposition, we will also continue
to strive to prevent this Agreement being approved by Congress. And we
maintain our strong demand for the Japanese Government to strive for
the banning and elimination of nuclear weapons and for the government
to initiate a multi-lateral discussion to that end in the near future.
7 September 2008
Hibakusha Groups
Terumi Tanaka
Secretary General
Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers (Nihon Hidankyo)
Kazushi Kaneko
Director General
Hiroshima Council of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations
Sunao Tuboi
Director General
Hiroshima Council of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations
Other Hiroshima and Nagasaki Groups
Nobuo Kazashi
Director
NO DU Hiroshima Project
Steven Leeper
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation
Haruko Moritaki
Director
Association for Peace Exchange with Indian & Pakistani Youth
Mitsuo Okamoto, Goro Kawai, Haruko Moritaki
Co-Directors
Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition
Masanobu Omori
Director
Hiroshima Council Against A and Hydrogen Bombs
Hideo Tsuchiyama
Director
Nagasaki Global Citizens' Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear
Weapons
Other Japanese NGOs
Hideyuki Ban
Co-Director
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
Sadao Ichikawa
Chair
Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs (Gensuikin)
Michiji Konuma
Secretary-General
Committee of Seven for World Peace Appeals
Masayoshi Naito
Coordinator
Citizens' Network for Nuclear Weapons Abolition
Osamu Niikura
President
Japanese Lawyers International Solidarity Association
Kenichi Ohkubo
Secretary General
Japan Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (JALANA)
Yoshiko Shidara
Co-Director
Women's Democratic Club
Hiroshi Taka
Secretary General
Japan Council against A- and H-Bombs (Gensuikyo)
II.
http://www.truthout.org/article/how-indias-nuclear-waiver-was-won
How India's Nuclear "Waiver" Was Won
Tuesday 09 September 2008
by: J. Sri Raman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Despite opposition from activists, India received a waiver from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a step towards completing the US-India nuclear deal. (Photo: Reuters)
According to India's National Security Adviser, M. K. Narayanan, the country won a waiver of the normal, non-proliferation conditions of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) over the weekend - believe it or not - because of "divine support."
Evidence, however, points to a superpower and its outgoing president as the source of the extra-diplomatic support that enabled India to take this penultimate step toward "operationalizing" the US-India nuclear deal. The final step will be formal ratification by the US Congress of the bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation, which New Delhi and Washington concluded in July 2007.
Narayanan told a television channel that he was in his "puja (prayer) room" at 1 a.m. when his colleague and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon phoned him to share his anxiety over the fate of the deal in the crucial session of the 45-member NSG in Vienna. The spiritual-minded security counselor stayed unruffled. He told Menon that he had received an assurance in the matter from "the highest quarters."
Those with a different idea of divinity might demur. The waiver has caused such wild jubilation in Indian circles, which consider a pro-peace stance as the opposite of patriotism, precisely because it has been won without the country renouncing its legal right to conduct a nuclear-weapon test again. And, if India tests again, it will do so only in order to make bigger and better bombs. To some of us, divine intervention to help a worshiper acquire more mass-destructive weapons might seem an improbable idea.
None of us, however, would consider as anything but natural pro-India intervention for the same purpose by Washington under George W. Bush - despite the war it launched on Iraq for finding weapons of mass destruction that have proven fictitious. Reports from Vienna confirm that the intervention has not been of a refined, traditionally diplomatic kind either.
Many analysts have already noted the irony of the fact that the NSG, set up in 1975 as a response to India's first and professedly "peaceful nuclear explosion" of the previous year, has lifted the ban on nuclear commerce for the country within a decade of its declaration as a nuclear-weapon state. The other irony of the US, which has given the NSG its clout all these years, taking the lead in weakening it with the waiver has also drawn attention.
To some, the more striking irony is of the privileged signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - the P5 comprising the US, Russia, the UK, France and China - themselves presiding over the liquidation of the treaty. All five are members of the NSG, which has extended the waiver to India, a non-signatory to the NPT. To some others, the supreme irony may seem to be the one about the discriminatory and hypocritical treaty being glorified as a global non-proliferation guide and depicting the P5 as harbingers of nuclear disarmament.
Opposition to the waiver, however, was expected only from other NSG members. The US had undertaken to assist India in this forum. Nicholas Burns, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, had said on August 4, 2007, that Washington would act as "India's shepherd" at the NSG. It was as good as its word, going by the way it herded a handful of reluctant members into the pro-deal pen.
The official text of the waiver is not available at the moment this writing. It is, nevertheless, clear that the NSG has been persuaded to grant the waiver on the "basis" of a statement made by India's External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, in New Delhi, reiterating a "voluntary moratorium" on testing declared soon after the nuclear-weapon tests of 1998. Similarly, no details of the US diplomacy in the NSG have been divulged, but no doubt is left about its unusual character.
The US and India had to deal, finally, with six holdouts - Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. The first three fell in line after an initial show of resistance, but the others seemed to stand firm until the night of September 5. They demanded a linkage between the waiver and an Indian commitment not to test again, among other conditions. China, too, joined the dissenters toward the end. Midnight diplomacy of a muscular kind, however, made all the difference and manufactured the waiver of September 6, by all accounts.
Jayantha Dhanapala, the eminent Sri Lankan who served as the UN undersecretary general in 1998-2003, talked of this tough diplomacy in his last-minute appeal to the dissenters to stay firm. He said: "Brutal and unconscionable pressure has been exerted on the few countries who opposed the US-India draft...."
A report in a leading Indian newspaper said "dozens of phone calls" were made "at the highest levels Thursday and Friday (September 5) night to various principals across the world to get the deal through." At the receiving end were Chinese President Hu Jintao and leaders of Ireland, Austria and New Zealand. "At the highest levels," clarified the report, was "a euphemism for President Bush, whose single-minded pursuit of this deal was largely instrumental in getting it through in the waning days of his second term."
The account was not too ambiguous about the character of the calls and the campaign. It said: "Not that Uncle Sam was delicate in the pursuit of its objective. In fact, the word out of Vienna is that US strong-arm tactics left plenty of bruised feelings." Another Indian daily quoted a Western diplomat as complaining that his country and others had been "leaned on at the highest levels." According to the same paper, it needed a series of "fairly real-time demarches" by Washington to ensure withdrawal of objections to the draft waiver.
"For the first time in my experience of international diplomatic negotiations, a consensus decision was followed by complete silence in the room. No clapping, nothing," one European diplomat confided to a news agency. "It showed a lot of us felt pressured to some extent into a decision by the Americans and few were totally satisfied."
The dominant Indian media, representing a dreamy-eyed middle class as well as demented nuclear militarists, were delighted. Sample this from a brazen editorial (captioned "Savor the change") in the Indian Express, which has always batted for Bush and the bomb: "India should have no illusions that it was sweet reason - for example, the argument that India has "impeccable" non-proliferation credentials - that ultimately silenced New Delhi's opponents in the NSG. It was Washington's brutal exercise of power that forced the recalcitrant members of the NSG, including China, to stand down."
The editorial added: "As it reflects on the NSG experience, Indian diplomacy should lose no more time in moving decisively from its traditional emphasis on the power of the argument to the more effective argument of power." The waiver, in other words, reinforced the argument for the US-India "strategic partnership" that promoted this country as a regional power, besides promising it at least a secondary place in the "nuclear club" and the UN Security Council.
The waiver did not come without earlier indications. As far back as August 13, 2007, we noted in these columns (Nuclear Suppliers Drop Opposition to US-India Deal) the readiness of two significant NPT signatories to renege on their avowed commitment. Germany's ambassador in India, Bernd Muetzelberg, then announced that his country would try to "forge a consensus" within the group on the deal and in favor of it. He said: "It's not an easy task (to forge a consensus) given India's consistent refusal to join the NPT regime. But we also understand India's security situation in which it has to operate." Around the same time, the Australian government, under Prime Minister John Howard, too, promised to consider "the potential sale of Australian uranium to India fairly soon."
Germany chaired the NSG session this time and, according to one critic, "sat on its thumbs," giving the US time and opportunity through repeated adjournments for its waiver-pushing diplomacy. After Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party replaced Howard as Australia's prime minister in November 2007, his government ruled out sale of uranium to India. Last month, however, Rudd surprised his supporters by announcing his backing for New Delhi in the NSG. It is not only the stick that has won India the waiver, but also the carrot, especially for the corporates. France and Russia have made no secret of the fact that they have been waiting in the wings for the waiver, which would open the doors to lucrative nuclear trade for them, regardless of what happens in the US Congress. Even before the finalization of the US-India bilateral agreement last year, a former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission said: "French and American nuclear businesses, holding talks with Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), could go ahead with the selection of sites for power plants and other modalities."
As noted before, expert projections made in December 2006 envisage an increase in India's nuclear arsenal by 40 to 50 weapons a year as a result of the deal. The country is also expected to acquire 40 nuclear reactors over the next two decades or so. India has announced plans to expand its current installed nuclear-energy capacity from 3,500 megawatts to 60,000 megawatts by 2040. The expansion is valued at $150 billion. All this offers mouth-watering prospects for megaplayers in the world nuclear industry.
Indian corporate houses are no less excited. According to one report, the "end of India's nuclear isolation" will pave the way for a minimum investment of Indian rupees 840 billion ($18.9 billion) in nuclear power generation capacity in the near future. This, suggest other reports, may be an underestimate. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) did not wait long after the waiver to announce that about 40 Indian firms are in talks with companies abroad to set up power plants, envisaging an investment of about Indian rupees 2,000 billion ($165.5 billion) over 15 years. The US-India agreement cannot realistically be expected to encounter insuperable opposition in the Congress, though the anti-nuclear movement will certainly mount an offensive against the ratification. Bipartisan support for the agreement, once considered beyond the realm of possibility, did come through in time for the treaty's finalization. The welcome extended to the waiver by both John McCain and Barack Obama is more than a straw in the wind.
In India, the left has vowed to terminate the deal after the general election due in early 2009. The far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which initiated the US-India "strategic partnership," talks of renegotiating the deal once it returns to power. Neither of the threats is receiving wide and serious attention, even as nuclear militarists and their media call for a national celebration of the victory in Vienna.
III.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/opinion/09tue2.html?ref=opinion
September 9, 2008
Editorial
A Bad Deal
President Bush has failed to achieve so many of his foreign policy goals, but last weekend he proved that he can still get what he really wants. The administration bullied and wheedled international approval of the president's ill-conceived nuclear deal with India.
The decision by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (which sets rules for nuclear trade) means that for the first time in more than 30 years — since New Delhi used its civilian nuclear program to produce a bomb — the world can sell nuclear fuel and technology to India.
Mr. Bush and his aides argued that India is an important democracy and dismissed warnings that breaking the rules would make it even harder to pressure Iran and others to abandon their nuclear ambitions.
The White House will now try to wheedle and bully Congress to quickly sign off on the deal. Congress should resist that pressure.
The nuclear agreement was a bad idea from the start. Mr. Bush and his team were so eager for a foreign policy success that they gave away the store. They extracted no promise from India to stop producing bomb-making material. No promise not to expand its arsenal. And no promise not to resume nuclear testing.
The administration — and India's high-priced lobbyists — managed to persuade Congress in 2006 to give its preliminary approval. But Congress insisted on a few important conditions, including a halt to all nuclear trade if India tests another weapon.
That didn't stop the White House from insisting on more generous terms from the suppliers' group. When New Zealand and a group of other sensible countries tried to impose similar restrictions, the administration pulled out all of the diplomatic stops. (Officials proudly reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made at least two dozen calls to governments around the world to press for the India waiver.)
The suppliers' group gave its approval after India said it would abide by a voluntary moratorium on testing — but it does not require any member to cut off trade if India breaks that pledge.
That means that if India tests a nuclear weapon, it could still bypass American suppliers and keep buying fuel and technology from other less exacting sellers. Let us be clear about this. It is the administration that disadvantaged American companies when it argued for more lenient rules from the suppliers group than those written into American law.
And let us also be clear that Congress's restrictions were a sensible effort to limit the damage from this damaging deal and maintain a few shreds of American credibility when it comes to restraining the spread of nuclear weapons.
Lawmakers should hold off considering the deal at least until the new Congress takes office in January. And they must insist that at a minimum, the restrictions already written into American law are strictly adhered to.
The next president will have to do a far better job containing the world's growing nuclear appetites. And for that, he will need all of the moral authority and leverage he can muster.
