Worries over India nuke deal

NEWSDAY | March 6, 2006
BY GREGORY BEALS

The Bush administration hailed last week's nuclear pact with India as a first step toward a new economic and strategic partnership, but several nonproliferation experts say it represents a potentially dangerous escalation of India's capacity to produce nuclear weapons. They also say it could be the next step in a regional nuclear arms race.

"This deal permits India to do much more than continue producing fissile material for weapons," said Robert Einhorn, the State Department's assistant secretary for nonproliferation between 1999 and 2001. "It allows India to vastly increase its nuclear arsenal." Einhorn and others believe the deal will greatly expand India's ability to produce nuclear weapons from about six per year to about 50 a year.

Bush agreed in the deal to share nuclear reactors, fuel and expertise with the energy-starved nation in return for its acceptance of international safeguards. The administration also has hinted that the deal would allow India to become a strategic balance to China's military power.

Under the agreement, the details of which were hammered out by diplomats on both sides hours before Air Force One landed in New Delhi last week, the United States would end a ban placed on sales of nuclear fuel, equipment and technology to India almost 32 years ago when it exploded its first nuclear device. In turn, India would divide its nuclear program into military and civilian elements and open its civilian reactors to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Under the arrangement, 14 of 22 nuclear reactors, seven not yet built, would be placed under international inspections as civilian facilities. Civilian reactors would receive internationally supplied enriched uranium and plutonium for their operations. India would have the sole right to classify the remaining eight reactors of its choosing as military and not subject to inspections.

Previously, limiting supplies of nuclear fuel available to India has forced it to make difficult choices about how much of its nuclear program could be devoted to future military use. Normally, reactors used for nuclear weapons must be shut down periodically in order to extract fissile material -- highly enriched uranium or plutonium -- making them inefficient for producing electricity.

Under the new pact, India would receive international supplies of technology and fuel. And because India could choose which reactors would be declared civilian or military, it could actually use reactors that create the most fissile materials as a by-product of their operations to build atomic weapons. Under the accord, at least two "breeder" reactors capable of producing large amounts of plutonium would not be subject to monitoring.

"India got everything and they gave nothing," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The president has sold out U.S. national security interests for a handful of mangoes."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice already has discounted a similar U.S.-Pakistan nuclear pact on concerns over proliferation. But Cirincione said the deal with India also may spur China to try to make a similar arrangement with Pakistan, which has been India's adversary since the independence of both countries. China has previously expressed interest in building nuclear facilities in Pakistan.

"If the Bush administration can decide when the rules of nonproliferation apply then what is to stop China or Russia from doing the same?" Cirincione asked.

Last modified March 6, 2006