US and India strike deal on nuclear technology
WASHINGTON -- Three years after President Bush urged global rules to stop additional nations from making nuclear fuel, the White House will announce today that it is carving out an exception for India, in a last-ditch effort to seal a civilian nuclear deal between the countries.
The scheduled announcement, described yesterday by senior American officials, ends more than a year of negotiations intended to keep an unusual arrangement between the countries from being defeated in New Delhi.
Until the overall deal was approved by Congress last year, the United States was prohibited from selling civilian nuclear technology to India because it has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The legislation passed by Congress required the United States to cut off the supply of nuclear fuel to India.
India's Parliament balked at the deal, with politicians there complaining that the restriction infringed on India's sovereignty because it cut off nuclear assistance to India if it tested a nuclear weapon, and because it prohibited India from using American fuel to help bolster its weapons arsenal.
Under the arrangement that is to be announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush has agreed to go beyond the terms of the deal that Congress approved, promising to help India build a nuclear fuel repository and find alternative sources of nuclear fuel, an arrangement that skirts some of the provisions of the law.
It leaves Bush, who in 2004 declared that "enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," in the position of making concessions that appear to help Indian efforts to make new nuclear fuel.
The problem is a delicate one for the administration because this month American officials are working at the UN Security Council to win approval of stronger economic sanctions against Iran for attempting to enrich uranium. India is a nuclear weapons state and has refused to sign the treaty; Iran, a signer of the treaty, does not have nuclear weapons.
Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who opposed the initial deal and said he would try to defeat the new arrangement, said yesterday: "If you make an exception for India, we will be preaching from a barstool to the rest of the world."
Though India would be prohibited from using the fuel it purchases from the United States for nuclear weapons, the ability to reprocess the fuel means India's other supplies would be freed up to expand its arsenal. "It creates a double standard," Markey said. "One set of rules for countries we like, another for countries we don't."
The agreement, reached late last week after months of negotiations that have involved Bush and India's top leadership, leaves unclear what would happen if India conducted a new nuclear test.
