Some say important restrictions lacking

WASHINGTON -- More than three decades after India developed nuclear weapons in defiance of the world, President Bush and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, announced yesterday that they had reached an agreement that would allow India to obtain civilian nuclear technology and expertise from American companies without having to curtail its nuclear arsenal.

The historic accord, finalized just after Bush arrived in New Delhi, calls for India to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors as ''civilian" and submit them to international inspections. The remaining eight reactors would be classified as ''military" and remain closed to inspections.

The agreement, which still must be approved by Congress, gives India a chance to emerge from its status as a nuclear pariah, dating to 1974 when it first tested a nuclear device; since then it has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But critics of the deal say it rewards India for flouting international rules and sends a message that other rogue nuclear programs could one day gain international acceptance.

Yesterday, Bush told reporters that the major benefit of the agreement was that India, which has one of the world's fastest-growing economies, could now be fueled by efficient, Western-produced nuclear power plants, not oil. India's voracious demand for oil has helped drive up the cost for oil consumers worldwide.

''I'm trying to think differently, not to stay stuck in the past," Bush told reporters as he stood next to Singh on the first visit to India of his presidency. ''We can achieve some important objectives, one of which is less reliance on fossil fuels; second is to work with our partners to help both our economies grow."

But critics of the deal, under negotiation since July, said Bush did not drive a hard enough bargain. They said he failed to win any major restrictions on India's nuclear arsenal, such as a halt to the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

''India has wanted this deal for 30 years," said Jon Wolfsthal, a former policy adviser for the US Department of Energy under President Clinton who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ''For them, this is the Holy Grail of international acceptance, and we sold it for pennies on the dollar. In the end, the major players in the Bush administration feel it's OK for India to have a large nuclear arsenal as long as its not directed at the United States, and that there might even be benefits, for instance, to deter against China."

Wolfsthal said if nuclear nonproliferation was a priority, the Bush administration could have gotten India to agree to open more reactors for international inspection, including India's so-called fast breeder reactors, built to produce nuclear fuel for either power plants or bombs.

Bush administration officials say inspections under the agreement would ensure that any international cooperation with India's civilian nuclear program would not be diverted to military uses. But Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the agreement would indirectly help India produce more nuclear weapons by freeing up its limited domestic supply of enriched uranium for military purposes because its civilian reactors would be fueled with uranium purchased on the international market.

He also said the agreement sends the wrong message to countries that rogue nuclear programs will eventually be accepted.

''What kind of lesson does this give to Iran?" Kimball said. ''That you can cheat and we may apply sanctions for a while, but in the end we'll come around and we'll give you what you wanted in the first place and we'll let you keep your weapons."

Only five countries -- the United States, Britain, China, Russia, and France -- are accepted as nuclear powers under the 1970 nonproliferation pact. All other countries that wanted to buy peaceful nuclear technology were required to sign the agreement, renounce nuclear weapons, and allow inspections.

India tested its first nuclear device in 1974, using plutonium that it had produced in a research reactor built by Canada with the assistance of the United States. That reactor, known as CIRUS, had been built in the 1950s under the ''Atoms for Peace" program on the condition that it would be used only for civilian purposes.

The explosion outraged Congress, which responded by passing the Nonproliferation Act of 1978, which prohibited the sale of nuclear technology to any nonnuclear power that had not opened its facilities to international inspections. Bush must persuade Congress to make an exception to this law for India to allow the agreement to go forward.

The principles behind that 1978 law were later adopted by the signatories of the international nonproliferation pact and by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a body of 45 nations that produce nuclear supplies, which also must change its rules to allow sales to India. The suppliers group could be the most difficult hurdle, specialists said, since it operates by consensus and China, a member, has already voiced opposition.

The 1974 Indian explosion set off an arms race in South Asia, as Pakistan strove to get the bomb. In 1998, Pakistan shocked the world by testing a nuclear weapon. Days later, India followed suit with another test. India is now thought to have between 50 to 100 nuclear bombs.

The pursuit of nuclear weapons has taxed the struggling economies of India and Pakistan. The nuclear suppliers group refused to sell civilian reactors to both nations since they refused to sign the nonproliferation pact. So they built their own facilities with items from the black market, making them costly and less efficient. Now India hopes the new deal will allow it to buy better nuclear power plants to feed the growing demand for power of its 1 billion people.

But critics of the deal, including some Republicans in Congress, say other countries will want the same privileges that India is being offered, without relinquishing nuclear arms or submitting military facilities to inspections.

Pakistan, Bush's next stop on his trip, indicated yesterday that it expects to get the same deal, even though one of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists recently confessed to secretly sharing nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea, and Libya.

''The ink on this agreement has barely dried and already Pakistan is asking for the very same special treaty," US Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, said in a statement. ''The United States has now pushed over a nuclear domino that falls against 187 other nations -- all signers of the Nonproliferation Treaty -- to review why they should honor a document which the nuclear superpowers no longer respect."

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, welcomed the agreement yesterday, saying in a statement that it could help bring India into the fold of the international inspections and signaled a ''a step forward toward universalization of the international safeguards regime."