George W. Bush did not hide his contempt for India at the Asia Society last week, when he implicitly equated us with Botswana and Burundi as ?recipient? states that would have to accept nuclear fuel and technology from the ?advanced? world. This week, he made it clear once again that India was unfit to get US support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. His confidantes had promised that he would visit India ?in the first year of his term?. Instead, he came in the sixth year, when politically he is not merely a lame duck, but a legless duck. And yet UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, through the instrumentality of her faithful assistant Manmohan Singh, has delivered the Indian nuclear establishment to this man. The Nuclear Agreement worked out by PMO and MEA bureaucrats sans any contribution by military and security experts, and only the most perfunctory participation of the scientific establishment, will?if implemented?weaken India´s security. Bush made it clear that India would remain a ?non-military? power under the NPT, which means that the inspections that Sonia Gandhi´s man has initially inflicted on 14 of the county´s 22 existing nuclear reactors will be of a viciously intrusive kind. IAEA inspectors, who are certain to act as spies for different countries, including Pakistan and China, will now have access to the innermost secrets of the India-developed reactors of the DAE. Even the fast breeder reactor can be prised open for inspections at a later stage, as the continuing negotiations of Nicholas Burns ( who appears determined to gut the Indian deterrent against China) demonstrate. While Sonia´s PM assured us that the deal was through, the reality is that this is only the first bite. More will assuredly follow. Will the UPA be able to shield India´s indigenous reactors (now and in the future) from the spywork of IAEA ?inspections?? The way in which Sonia Gandhi opens her doors to envoys of countries that daily abuse India for its temerity in developing a defense against nuclear attack shows that the answer is in the negative The much-hyped agreement is totally silent on the crucial question of dual use. Will the US dismantle the Iraq-style sanctions regime that it has enforced on India since 1974? Will India gain access to dual-use items or have the freedom (as a nuclear weapons state) to shift its assets from civilian to military use? The answer is no. Estimates show that the Bush-Singh agreement will need a further Rs 83,000 crores over just nine years if the crippling restrictions placed on it by Sonia-Manmohan are to be overcome. Whom will Manmohan Singh tax to meet this need? The Maino family, now happily resident in India? How will he meet the gap of 17,000 trained technical and support staff that will be needed thanks to the duplication of facilities caused by his cavalier attitude to India´s defense? The answer is that he will allow the Indian military programme to shrivel through lack of funds, the way it did during 1992-96, when he was Finance Minister and Montek Ahluwalia was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. And this is not all. Bush has publicly indicated that he expects India to go against its own policy and side with Washington in the Human Rights Commission. Already, Sonia-Manmohan have groveled over Iran. They will be forced to grovel again and again, to keep alive the vain hope of a reward for their give away.
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