Author: N Madhavan Kutty
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: August 15, 2006
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20060814131448
Eight senior nuclear scientists in the country
led by Dr H N Sethna, Dr M R Srinivasan and Dr P K Iyengar, all former chairmen
of the Atomic Energy Commission, have in a joint statement warned that US
law-makers in the Congress have modified in letter and spirit the implementation
of the July 18 nuclear cooperation agreement signed by the Prime Minister
and President Bush and appealed to the members of Parliament to step in to
see that the deal does not inhibit the country's future ability to develop
and pursue nuclear technology for the nation's benefit.
The statement wanted the Parliament to discuss
the nuke deal and arrive at a unanimous decision on it, recognising the fundamental
facts of India's indigenous nuclear science and technology development to
date, the efforts made to overcome the unfair restrictions placed on us and
the imaginative policies and planning enunciated and followed in the years
after independence.
The other five signatories to the statement
released here on the eve of Independence day are Dr A Goplakrishnan, former
Chairman Atomic Regulatory Board, Dr S L Kati, former Director, Nuclear Power
Corporation, Dr A N Prasad, former Director, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,
Dr Y S R Prasad, former Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation,
and Dr Placid Rodriguez, former Director, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic
Research.
The eight top nuclear scientists who had held
decision-making positions at the Secretary level in the country's nuclear
establishment under late Dr Homi Bhabha and shared the Nehruvian vision of
developing indigenous nuclear science and technology for nation-building have
for the first time collectively and openly challenged the Government's persistent
claim that American law-makers have not moved the goal posts in the implementation
of the July 18 agreement, thus adding their voice to the growing number of
critics of the fine print of the US Congressional legislation that is on the
anvil.
Their intervention is also timed to lend strength
to the demand by the opposition for passing a resolution by the Parliament
that would express a 'sense of the House'.
The Government has proposed a parliamentary
discussion on the deal to be replied to by the Prime Minister.
The nuclear scientists, while not faulting
the Government per se for striking the cooperation deal with the US, minced
no words on the trap that lay ahead for the country's nuclear programme if
the US law makers were allowed to craft its implementation the way they want.
They have warned that the country cannot accede
to any restrictions in perpetuity on our freedom to exercises the nuclear
strategic option.
They have demanded that external control through
safeguards be strictly restricted to those facilities that had materials imported
from external sources and that our independent Research and Development in
nuclear science and technology is not hampered by external supervision or
control or by the need to satisfy any international body.
While granting that international cooperation
in nuclear energy is useful and inevitable, the scientists pointed out that
it was for the nation and its parliament to work out and insist on the ground
rules for the sequences of action to implement such cooperation.
They noted that the Prime Minister has promised
to take up with the US certain clauses in the legislation but they warned
that if the US Congress in its wisdom passes the Bill in its present form,
the "product " will be unacceptable to India and diplomatically
it will be difficult to change it later.
