Both the Left and the Right slammed the government on Friday for proceeding with the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Slam Centre for risking nation’s interests over N-deal
NEW DELHI: Both the Left and the Right slammed the government on Friday for proceeding with the Indo-US nuclear deal, saying the draft safeguards agreement with the IAEA had “nothing India-specific”.
In a blistering attack, the Left accused the government of hiding the draft agreement to “suppress facts” that India was about to bind its entire civilian nuclear programme into perpetual safeguards, risking its shutdown if it “fails to toe the US line” on foreign policy issues.
CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said the government wanted to proceed with the agreement “without getting any concrete assurance for uninterrupted fuel supply, right to build strategic reserves and to take corrective steps in case supplies are stopped”.
He said the Left was not opposed to the safeguards agreement but was objecting to it because it was a step towards making the 123 deal operational.
“Going ahead with the safeguards agreement will be harmful for India. We will be placing our costly imported reactors under perpetual safeguards and risking their permanent shutdown in case of a failure to toe the US line on foreign policy issues.”
Noting that the agreement would treat India as a non-nuclear weapons state for safeguard facilities, Karat asserted a majority of assurances given by prime minister Manmohan Singh in parliament had not been met in the IAEA agreement.
Lambasting the deal, senior BJP leader Arun Shourie said, “If the safeguards are applied to India in accordance with the circulated draft agreement, not only would 14 of our 22 nuclear plants be open to stringent inspection by the nuclear watchdog but, more worryingly, India’s nuclear research and development facilities would be subject to inspections.”
The former Union minister said the draft safeguards agreement with the IAEA was a verbatim reproduction of ‘Information Circular 66’ of the UN body.
This model draft of the IAEA was meant for non-nuclear weapon states and, as such, there is nothing “India-specific” in the agreement, he said. Every clause Section 23 downward of the safeguards agreement was the same as clauses succeeding Section 20 of the model IAEA draft, Shourie pointed out.
“They have only added a preamble to it and what the preamble says does not matter. The operative part of the draft agreement is word for word, comma for comma, an exact copy of the IAEA’s Information Circular 66,” he said.
“About 35-40 research organisations in the country, including prestigious institutes such as TIFR and the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Sciences, will be governed by IAEA laws,” Shourie said. Like nuclear weapon states such as China, which have the right to withdraw a nuclear plant from inspection, non-nuclear weapon states can’t withdraw from inspections, he said. “The safeguards accepted will be in perpetuity.”
Referring to another “damning clause”, Shourie said all plants producing over 60kg of nuclear material would be exposed to IAEA access at all times.
k_benedict@dnaindia.net
s_rajesh@dnaindia.net
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