US Congman presses nuke alarm on India

WASHINGTON: Alarmed at the prospect of resumption of high-tech transfers between New Delhi and Washington, hawks in the US establishment have already begun to raise the red flag of proliferation.
A prominent Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts has written to Commerce Secretary Don Evans cautioning against any prospective sale of dual-use nuclear technology to India, saying it would be a hasty reward for "bad behaviour" since India had refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The 1968 NPT, which consecrates permanently nuclear status of the first five nuclear powers while denying a roll-back or allowing others to join the club, is regarded by India as discriminatory.
"Given our nation''s interest in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, I do not believe that the United States should allow a nation that has thumbed its nose at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to obtain access to dual-use technology," Markey said in the letter. "Why should we assist India in building better weapons that will further destabilise that region?"
Markey''s January 9 letter to Evans comes ahead of several crucial high-level exchanges this month between India and US aimed at working around the current sanctions and restrictions regime that deny New Delhi dual-use items.
A top US defence delegation is expected to visit India next week to discuss missile defence matters and the chairman of the U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission Richard Meserve will be meeting India''s nuclear establishment mandarins in Mumbai to discuss safety feature technologies for India''s civilian nuclear programme.
Indian officials suspect Markey''s salvo is aimed at derailing the exchanges. "Now that there is a distinct thaw in the administration''s outlook, the spoilers are coming out," one New Delhi-based official remarked.
Administration sources said there have been high level meetings within the government here to re-evaluate US policy towards India vis-Ã -vis supply of dual use technology. There appears to be an agreement in principle that the administration would work around some of excessively restrictive interpretation of existing laws.
In his diatribe, Markey was less concerned with the overall aspects of proliferation worldwide than with what he saw as India''s nuclear and conventional arms race with Pakistan.
Although the administration is still far from deciding the scope and range of any new cooperation, the Congressman warned that "Dual-use technology could allow India to miniaturize nuclear weapons for installation on missiles and to design nuclear submarines that could threaten any port in the world."
While India has steadfastly refused to sign the NPT from its inception on grounds that it is discriminatory, many other signatories have been in the proliferation business for a long time, a fact that did not particularly seem to concern Congressman Markey in course of his India-specific letter. Both China and North Korea (which on Friday threatened to withdraw from the NPT) have been accused of nuclear proliferation.
Even other countries which have been signatories and ostensibly given up pursuit of nuclear weapons appear to be having second thoughts about the NPT. Earlier this week, Brazil stunned the Non-Proliferation gurus by suggesting it should return to the nuclear path.
"Brazil is a country at peace, that has always preserved peace and is a defender of peace, but we need to be prepared, including technologically," Roberto Amaral, the newly appointed minister of science and technology, said in an interview with the Brazilian service of the BBC on Sunday night. "We can''t renounce any form of scientific knowledge, whether the genome, DNA or nuclear fission."
The ministger''s remarks followed election campaign speeches by Brazil''s new president Luiz da Silva in which he critisised the NPT as unjustly favoring the United States and other nations that already had nuclear weapons, an argument India has often made.
"If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?" da Silva had asked in course of his campaign. He has since tempered his remarks on assuming office, but the Brazilian debate and the North Korean crisis had rung alarm bells in the non-proliferation community.