Non-proliferation lobby elated over Carter's N-deal remarks

Protagonists of the non-proliferation lobby in the United States, keen on killing the US-India civilian nuclear agreement, are elated over former US president Jimmy Carter's blistering attack on the deal.

The attack comes as a shot in the arm for lawmakers to vote the 123 Agreement down when it ultimately comes up for a vote in Congress.

But the non-proliferationists in interviews with rediff.com, however, took exception to Carter's argument that the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency should now work not to prevent India's development of nuclear power, but to ensure that India signs the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as the other official nuclear nations have.

Len Weiss, one of the authors of the 1978 Nonproliferation Act, during the time he was a senior Congressional staffer serving on the Senate Government Affairs Committee, said, "President Carter is correct about the risks of the US-India deal, but he appears not to recognise that India cannot sign the NPT except as non-weapon state--unless the treaty were to be amended to allow India entry as a weapon state, a unlikely event."
 
He said Carter was "right to call for India to stop producing fissile material and to sign a comprehensive test ban," but acknowledged that "there is little likelihood of India doing either as long as the deal with the US is alive and India has not reached its 'minimum credible deterrent."
 
Weiss argued "the current turmoil over the deal in India and the evident concerns about the risks expressed not only by Carter but also by many other prominent Americans suggests that the deal is ill-conceived and should not go through."
 
Michael Krepon, founder and now president emeritus of the Henry Stimson Center--a Washington,DC-based think tank which has the only exclusive confidence-building measures programme on South Asia--in lauding the erstwhile president's critique of the US-India deal, said, "Carter has quite different views from the Bush Administration in how to help India grow and how to prevent proliferation."
 
He said, "The US-India deal is clever, but not wise. Its hidden intention is to help India to become a nuclear counterweight to China, which is the wrong way to help New Delhi compete with Beijing."
 
Krepon asserted, "This deal will also make the United States complicit in an Indian decision to resume testing nuclear weapons, whenever this occurs."
 
But Krepon also said Carter's call for the NSA and the IAEA to convince India to join the NPT was quixotic. "There is no realistic way that India can become a party to the NPT because the treaty amendment process is far too unwieldy."
 
He predicted that "many states would take blocking action against bringing India into the treaty as a nuclear weapon state and suggested that "a more realistic approach would be one that provides India with the benefits of a de facto membership alongside India's acceptance of the responsibilities of membership".
 
Krepon said, "The nuclear deal has run into trouble outside of India because many believe that it provides India with the benefits of de facto membership without India accepting the key responsibilities of membership."
 
"The five permanent members of the UN Security Council--all NPT parties--have all signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and appear to be respecting a moratorium on the production of bomb-making material."