Author:
Publication: Deccan Chronicle
Date: July 22, 2006
Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
was not willing to "offer much to the United States in exchange for the
(civilian nuclear energy) agreement, we got more from the government of Dr
Manmohan Singh," according to Dr Ashley Tellis, senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr Tellis worked with US officials
on the nuclear agreement with India.
Dr Tellis, who was earlier posted at the US
embassy here as adviser to former ambassador Robert Blackwill, told Internet
news site Rediff that the Vajpayee government also wanted the deal, but one
could not be reached because it was not giving much to the US. He said he
could not disclose what Washington had wanted from the Vajpayee government
but had been unable to get.
Asked by the reporter if Dr Manmohan Singh
had caved in "easily", Dr Tellis said, "There is no question
of Dr Singh caving in, India has got a deal that it would not have got in
the past or in the future." Sources close to Mr Vajpayee said there were
three points that his government was not willing to concede to Washington
with a clear record of this being established through the Jaswant Singh-Strobe
Talbott talks. These concerned the CTBT, the moratorium on fissile production
and a proposed restrain in the nuclear regime. The bills now pending a vote
in the US Congress clearly seek to "cap, reduce and eliminate" India's
nuclear programme, the sources pointed out, adding that the US administration
at the time "knew from the record that the Vajpayee government would
not concede any ground on these issues".
The only issue that the NDA government reportedly
was finally prepared to "elaborate upon," the sources said, was
the CTBT in that the US was told that India would not come in the way if all
the other countries agreed to ratify the treaty. It did not come to that point
finally as the US Senate itself rejected the ratification of CTBT. The discussions,
the sources said, did not get near the shape of an agreement as the issues
that needed to be reconciled for such an agreement to take shape were not
agreed upon by the NDA negotiators at the time.
"We did not give them anything, and they
never came out with anything (like a nuclear agreement) openly," the
sources said. Dr Manmohan Singh has agreed to accept all the conditions that
were reportedly rejected by his predecessor. The bill cleared by the US Senate
committee on foreign relations seeks to "achieve as quickly as possible
a cessation of the production by India and Pakistan of fissile materials for
nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices".
The US Atomic Energy Act will be invoked to
ensure that India cannot test a nuclear device. Dr Tellis, who was here to
"celebrate" the first anniversary of the India-US civilian nuclear
energy co-operation agreement, admitted in the interview that the treaty "could"
fall if India conducted a nuclear test. Nuclear experts have already pointed
towards US success in bringing India within the CTBT "through the back
door". Leading nuclear scientist Dr Homi Sethna has gone on record to
say that it would be better if India signed the NPT than conformed to the
provisions of the deal as "it was the lesser of the two evils."
