Talbott has attacked the Bush administration for agreeing to the nuclear deal in the present form, saying it amounted to giving "cost-free exception to the strictures of the NPT".
Ajay Kaul
NEW DELHI: Former US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has attacked the Bush administration for agreeing to the nuclear deal in the present form, saying it amounted to giving "cost-free exception to the strictures of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)".
The US had offered the civil nuclear deal to India during the Clinton administration but the then NDA government's inability to sign the CTBT and accept three other modest suggestions ensured it did not fructify, he said on Tuesday.
The pact would have been different under the Clinton government even though any US President would have wanted to strengthen the relationship with New Delhi and "find some accommodation with India on the nuclear issue", Talbott told PTI in an interview here.
Talbott, who had been engaged in a strategic dialogue with then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, said the current US administration chose to give India a virtually cost-free exception to the strictures of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
He said this was not a criticism of India for asking for such a deal, but a criticism of my own government for not having driven a harder bargain.
"Whether driving a harder bargain would have succeeded or not, one never knows," he said.
Talbott said his concerns were not that India will be an irresponsible custodian of nuclear weapons but that other countries, using India's case, would demand the same.
There are at least half a dozen such countries, including in the Gulf and Middle East who could do so, he said, adding Iran is one of the nations having ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.
Talbott said the civil nuclear deal had initially been sought by the Clinton administration whose tenure ended in 2000.
Asked what went wrong, he said, "The BJP government wasn't able or willing to meet the quite modest and reasonable suggestions we put forth."
He recalled that "there was a lot of political drama in India and the BJP government was not strong enough to sign the CTBT". That initiative was lost as "we (the Clinton administration) had run out of time".
Talbott said the Clinton administration's suggestions would have helped the bilateral relationship blossom.
Elaborating, he said these suggestions or so-called benchmarks included India signing the CTBT and accepting a proposition for a cut-off on fissile material production.
The Clinton administration also wanted India to give the world some assurances that as India developed and deployed its weapon capability, it would (translate into action) its slogan of credible minimum deterrent and put in place a world-class export control mechanism
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