Neocons' new Host: Weapons proliferation w/ India

[Moses]

'New era' on defense for India and U.S.

By Amelia Gentleman International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2005

NEW DELHI A 10-year military agreement just signed by the defense secretaries of the United States and India is intended to provide for numerous advances in the relationship, including joint weapons production, greater sharing of technology and intelligence as well as an increased trade in arms.
 
A statement signed by India's defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in Washington on Tuesday night said that the United States and India had "entered a new era" and declared that the two countries' defense relationship had advanced to "unprecedented levels of cooperation."
 
Ten years after India and the United States signed their previous agreement on defense, and seven years after Washington broke military relations after India's first nuclear tests, the new framework upgraded the agreement between "the world's two largest democracies" from a "defense relationship" to a "strategic partnership" that is intended to strengthen "our countries' security" and "build greater understanding between our defense establishments," according to the document.
 
The agreement was greeted with mixed reviews in New Delhi. Some analysts interpreted it as a significant manifestation of Washington's recently stated commitment to help India transform itself into world power in the 21st century.
 
Raja Mohan, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi specializing in relations between the United States and India, described the agreement as a "huge step forward."
 
"There has been a lot of skepticism about America's intentions, but this lays out a fully fledged framework for the next decade," he said. "It's a serious document."
 
But others were more doubtful, asserting that the agreement had more to do with U.S. strategic concerns than with a single-minded desire to engage with India.
 
Many of these analysts interpret the recent U.S. courtship of India as part of a wider goal of containing the growing power and influence of India's Asian rival, China.
 
Lalit Mansingh, India's foreign secretary between 1999 and 2001 who subsequently served as ambassador to the Washington until 2004, agreed that this was a significant agreement. "We have much greater shared interests than we did 10 years ago, and we are talking now about co-production of arms," [at the expense of the US taxpayer] he said. "This is quite clearly a new step towards strategic partnership."
 
However, he also sensed a shadow of shared U.S. and Indian unease over China lingering over the document, which he said would be the subject of close scrutiny in Beijing. "China is like the ghost at the banquet - an unspoken presence that no one wants to talk about," Mansingh said.
 
"No one in Washington or Delhi would admit that this has anything to do with China," he continued with a reference to ideological neoconservatives in the United States. "But the U.S. neocons say that the long-term threat to the U.S. can only be from China, and India also realizes that it has a neighbor with whom it has border disputes, whose economic and military growth is greater than its own."[/b]
 
The agreement paves the way for increased joint military exercises and aims for more "opportunities for technology transfer, collaboration, coproduction, and research and development" and expanded collaboration on missile defense. "This defense relationship will support, and will be an element of, the broader U.S.-India strategic partnership," the agreement concluded.
 
Mukherjee was in the United States in advance of a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, scheduled for July 18, when the Indian delegation will be hoping to secure further proof of U.S. warmth, in the form of backing for its campaign for a permanent seat on a reformed UN Security Council.
 
Many of the aspirations in the framework need to be negotiated in detail and are subject to approval from lawmakers in both countries. The document was nevertheless seen in Delhi on Wednesday as an important signal of intention.
 
Mohan stressed that the document should not simply be viewed in the light of U.S. fears about Beijing's rising influence.
 
In a speech Tuesday before the document was signed, Mukherjee urged Washington to go further and lift a ban on nuclear technology transfers to India, imposed in the wake of India's nuclear tests in 1998. He also suggested that U.S. defense industries could outsource some of their functions to India - in areas such as repair, overhaul and servicing.
 
In an apparent attempt to preempt any domestic concern that the deal would lead to an excessive reliance on the United States, Mukherjee made a point of stressing in a separate speech to the Carnegie Institute on Tuesday that India would retain its independent foreign policy, rejecting any notions of a "unipolar" world.
 
Uday Bhaskar, director of Delhi's Institute for Defense Studies, said this was a crucial element of Indian policy and said that the framework agreement should not be seen as a move by India toward dependence on Washington.
 
"I don't think that India has the DNA to allow it to become a Japan or a Britain in terms of adopting a subordinate status to the U.S. and allowing them to guarantee the nation's security. India's strategic culture would not allow it," he said.
 
 
Other

analysts in Delhi highlighted the ongoing conflict between the U.S. policy of friendship toward Delhi and its continued military support for India's nuclear rival, Pakistan.
 
"While the U.S. is trying to build this long-term relationship with India, it is also selling weapons systems to Pakistan," said Brahma Chellaney, a defense analyst with the Center for Policy Research. "It is a contradiction which won't be easily resolved."
 
 

[Moses]

 On June 27, in Washington, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and India's Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee signed a ten-year agreement titled the New Framework for US-India Defense Relationship (NFDR). The agreement has a provision for India's induction into the missile defense program.

    In concrete terms, the provision is likely to spell the transfer of one of the latest additions to the "Star Wars" arsenal - the Patriot Advanced Capability system (PAC 3). The PAC 3 has been peddled as a vast improvement on the PAC 2. The latest model is a lighter and low-noise missile built on a hit-to-kill technology, advertised as the sure terminator of all incoming enemy missiles.

    Despite its drooling lip service to the "peace process," Washington has thus initiated military-diplomatic maneuvers that the people-driven process may find hard to survive. What South Asia faces is an accelerated arms race with a dangerous nuclear dimension.

    The Pakistan establishment has lost no time to respond with a panicky threat to retaliate. Pakistan's ambassador in the US, General Jahangir Karamat, said: "This will be a new element in South Asia.... If India gets PAC 3, we will either have to ask the US also to provide the same system to us or we will have to think of other ways to have our own missile defense." Pakistan's External Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri soon added that the agreement would "introduce a new weapon system which will disturb the balance of power in South Asia and lead to an arms race in the region."

    The pact has shocked and upset Islamabad all the more because of the fact that the Pervez Musharraf regime has always presumed Pakistan's superiority in missile development, considered to make up for the lesser number of weapons in its nuclear arsenal. Propaganda on this point has accompanied Islamabad's "pro-peace" noises ever since the "process" started.

    Official Pakistan has not let the "process" deter it from carrying its missile development program forward. On March 19, 2005, even while protesting its "peace" intentions, the military rulers staged a highly publicized test-firing of the Shaheen II missile, noted by observers for its capacity to strike at deep-interior Indian targets. Declared General Musharraf: "The capability was here to stay, will continue to go from strength to strength and no harm will ever be allowed to come to it."

    {b]The origin of the agreement can be traced back to a denouement in US-India defense relations in the days of the far-right National Democratic Alliance government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi.[/b] The NDA regime was one of the very few governments in the world, and probably the only one in the Third World, to welcome the Bush version of the "Star Wars" program. The Vajpayee government went out of its way, in fact, to accept in public the untenable proposition that the program was actually an attempt at effecting "deep slashes" in the US nuclear arsenal.

    The idea of India-US missile defense cooperation was pursued in regular meetings of a joint Defense Policy Group. In January 2004, Washington promised greater Indian access to US missile assistance. In March, just two months before India's people replaced the NDA regime with a government of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), even a simulated missile defense exercise was conducted.

    Several US and Indian experts then predicted bleak days for India-US missile defense cooperation. The UPA government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has now proven them wrong. It threatens to betray the popular mandate in this regard and to breach a Common Minimum Program (CMP). An independent foreign policy and a striving for a multi-polar world figure among the new coalition's objectives in the CMP. Partnership in Washington's Global Missile Defense is patently at variance with these objectives.

    The agreement followed a visit to India by US Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker. After talks on the subject, he said: "We are willing to talk to India about missile defense. Missile defense is very expensive. So, it is not something that India will enter into lightly."

    The astronomical expenditure the program will entail, however, does not seem to weigh heavily with the government. It has not long ago inflicted the largest-ever annual defense budget on India's poor millions. The devoutly desired association with a program of the scale of the "Star Wars" promises no lightening of the people's burden.

---

    A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA).

[Moses]

A Newspaper Published by World Institute for Asian Studies.

Vol. 5 No. 94   

Date : 2005-07-27
Doomed If They Do, Doomed If They Don’t: The Indian Nuclear Menace May Get Worse
By S. P. Udayakumar
Part I

Since the issue at hand is so complicated and steeped in strategic considerations and nucular, sorry, nuclear jargons, let us try to understand the situation with the help of an allegory, “The Largest Singh Meets the Longest Sam, A True Sad Story.”

There have been living a largest democracy (aka The Largest Singh) and a longest democracy (also known as (aka) The Longest Sam) in our strange political world. The longest Sam who has always ignored the largest Singh suddenly decides to discover the latter.

There is a background to this discovery. The largest Sam has been seeing a dragon-like apparition for sometime now. This stubborn ghost keeps coming and coming (especially after the ‘iron curtain’ was removed and the ‘rising sun’ went into recession). So the longest Sam desperately tries to find an exorcist, who could deal with this ghost locally and stop it from coming to his shores. Finally, the longest Sam finds an exorcist, the largest Singh with many a trick under his turban and with all the potentials (and even some vague aspirations) to be able to ‘come’ himself at some distant future point. So the longest Sam designs a strategy! Tie up the stubborn apparition and the supple exorcist together. So neither of them will be coming! At least for sometime!

The largest Singh (exorcist) has indeed had a confrontation with this dragon-like apparition once before and still fosters some ill-will. However, he is more worried about the next-door sorcerer, Hush-Mush-Sharaf who keeps directing little demons and devils to his door. So the largest Singh creates a few blood-sucking parasitic vampires called Bomb-Iyers. Not to be let down in the tussle, Hush-Mush-Sharaf, the sorcerer, creates his own killer conman, Bomb-Sell Khan. Strangely enough, BS Khan has the blessings of the dragon-ghost while his necromancer boss keeps in touch with the longest Sam.

So our largest Singh is caught up in a mess now:

Bomb-Sell Khan bobs round and round
And the dragon dances all around.
The longest Sam’s watching on the WH-mount ;
And the Bomb-Iyers nag and nag for more amount.

The Bomb-Iyers have been promising radically big and radiantly (or radioactively?) bright things that could stop the BS Khans, scare away the Beijing ghost, make the largest Singh look like the longest Sam, and even secure him a place in history, in future, in the history of future, in the future of history, and all at the same time.

Alas, Bomb-Iyers turn out to be idle extortionists. They keep asking for more money, more time, more secrecy, and more laws, more (foreign) help, more patience, more waste, more, more, more. In the meantime, the demons still keep coming (albeit in smaller numbers) and the dragon continues to haunt. As the going gets tough in CD (Capital Delhi), the largest Singh goes to DC.

In DC, the longest Sam plots a strategy:

Hmm…how about I give the largest Singh the technology vampire
Just as my good ol’ Brit cousins threw his textile knowledge into bonfire.
That will certainly pull the rug under the feet of Bomb-Iyers
And give me complete control to tie ‘em all up with just one coir.
The longest Sam screams at the top of his voice: “Now clear…Now clear…New Clear …Nucular!”

Sam beckons Singh; Singh obliges Sam. The largest democracy and the longest democracy meet! In a totally undemocratic manner, of course! The largest Singh had not taken his people into confidence before giving up his independence in important policy matters. Similarly, the longest Sam has had no consultations with his people or policymakers or foreign friends (and fiends).
Having agreed upon something (only portions of which have been shared with their respective popular and representative constituencies), the longest Sam and the largest Singh are going back to work - to make the deal democratic. With hands around each other, they mutter in unison: “Strange workings of the democratic spirit!”

And the people in the largest Singh’s native land who have been trying to get rid of the parasitic Bomb-Iyers and their ‘vegetarian’ and ‘non-vegetarian’ nuclear diets look all worried. Do Singh and Sam do something about this nuclear menace? The largest Singh and the longest Sam swing their bottoms crooning: “Doomed If We Do, Doomed If We Don’t.”

The Energy Carrot and the China Stick

In a paper entitled “India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States” (2005), Ashley J. Tellis, a US-India relations specialist at Carnegie Endowment, identifies three constraints on India’s rapid economic growth and on the emergence as a great power: insufficient access to energy, shortage of foreign investment and infrastructural weakness. Suggesting the creation of an energy dialogue as a means to jump-start the US-India relations, Tellis points out that India’s energy challenges cut across multiple realms such as foreign policy, geopolitics, environmental concerns and proliferation.

Discussing in detail the different aspects of India’s civilian nuclear power program and its strengths and weaknesses, such as the Department of Atomic Energy’s (DAE) three-stage program and its implications, India’s shortage of natural uranium, the rich thorium reserves etc., Tellis insists that Washington should satisfy New Delhi’s need for nuclear energy. To circumvent the problem of integrating India into the global nonproliferation order, he comes up with five illustrative options the United States has and envisions six end-states of integrating India into the Global Nuclear Regime.

However, two considerations weigh heavily in the analysis of Tellis that reflect the concerns of his Washington masters. One, the US should increase India’s access to civilian nuclear energy that implies integration with the global regime, “because this course of action alone provides the best guarantee that New Delhi will scrupulously control its national capabilities permanently and thus choke off the only real security threat emanating from India to the United States.” Two, integrating India into the nonproliferation order at the cost of capping the size of its nuclear deterrent could “place New Delhi at a severe disadvantage vis-à-vis Beijing, a situation that could not only undermine Indian security but also U.S. interests in Asia in the face of the prospective rise of Chinese power over the long term.”

In other words, Tellis, who is a close confidant of Robert Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India, who has brokered this current US-India deal proposes that the US should help India with the civilian nuclear program and get a foothold in Indian affairs and policies and also advocates closer bilateral relations that is steeped in American military sales and support for India’s growing nuclear weapons program. Thus the so-called India nuclear deal, as the American media have christened, comprises of ‘the energy carrot and the China stick’ that the United States will employ to drive India into subservience.

[Moses]

According to the “Indo-US Joint Statement,” the Indian nuclear establishment will have to identify and separate civilian and military nuclear facilities and programs “in a phased manner” and file a declaration regarding the civilian facilities with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It should take a decision to ”place voluntarily its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards” and should also sign and adhere “to an Additional Protocol with respect to civilian nuclear facilities.” India will continue the “unilateral” moratorium on nuclear testing and persist with the non-proliferation export control policies. India will also work with the US on concluding the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) and adhere to the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Interestingly enough, nobody knows what these “phased manner,” “declaration,” voluntary placement, IAEA safeguards, and the “Additional Protocol” all mean or will consist of.

The “Indo-US Joint Statement” is also vague about its nuclear fuel commitments. It says that the US administration will work with the US Congress and their friends and allies in order to “adjust” the national laws and policies and the international regimes “to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India, including but not limited to expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur.” So nuclear fuel for Tarapur plants are promised even without talking about the four-decade-old plants’ continued viability or the decommissioning aspects.

Similarly, the US “will encourage its partners” to consider the fuel request expeditiously. Although this is a rather clumsy and vague undertaking, countries like Russia, who have been constrained by the NSG commitments and hence reluctant to supply the fuel for Tarapur and construct additional nuclear plants in India, may jump at this opportunity and go berserk.

The deal also talks about the United States’ willingness to “consult with its partners…with a view toward India’s inclusion” in the ITER and Generation IV International Forum. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a project in which six countries are experimenting under the aegis of IAEA with a hydrogen plasma torus to design and build nuclear fusion power plants. Generation IV is a project undertaken by ten countries under the US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to examine concepts that may bring about economical, safe, proliferation-resistant and less-waste-producing nuclear reactors.

New Delhi along with its ‘big-on-words-and-small-on-action’ Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is embarking upon a highly ambitious plan of producing 20,000 MW power from nuclear power plants by the year 2020 and increasing that ceiling to 40,000 MW eventually. For such a grand plan to fructify, India needs lots and lots of natural or enriched uranium fuel. Although the DAE has been talking about fast breeder reactors, using thorium as fuel, and constructing advanced heavy water reactors (AHWRs), New Delhi seems to have realized that the only way to get so much nuclear fuel and generate more power is through some kind of an arrangement with external sources. For such a thing to happen, the Nuclear Suppliers Group should relax its strict regime and make exceptions for India. And that could happen only with the blessings of the United States.

However, the current US Non-proliferation Act prevents India and other countries that have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from acquiring a wide range of US military technology that included components that could be used for nuclear programs. Although the current deal promises assistance with civilian nuclear program, it all remains to be seen if the US Congress will be willing to change the nonproliferation act that bars American nuclear energy aid to nuclear weapons states or if the NSG will be ready to bend its rules for India. It will also be interesting to see if the US, that has not built a new nuclear power station since 1996, will resume constructing nuclear power projects. After all, the American public is not enthusiastic about this. For instance, when the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant came up for re-licensing in the state of New Jersey last summer (2004), the entire civil society was up in arms against the move and stopped it.

The United States has specific goals to achieve in signing the current deal. It wants to accelerate India’s rise as a global power only to place it as a regional counterweight to China. Interestingly, a Pentagon report on China’s military strength, released when Dr. Manmohan Singh was in the US, argues that China is increasing its nuclear arsenal and that the Chinese missiles can strike India, Russia, and all of the United States.

As a country that thrives on the sale of weapons and military technologies, the United States also has business plans in mind. According to the Indo-US Joint Statement, President Bush has said, “as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states.” These “benefits and advantages” would be India’s purchasing $ 5 billion worth of conventional military equipment from the US including anti-submarine patrol aircraft that could spot Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean, and Aegis radars that could help the Indian destroyers operating in the strategic Strait of Malacca monitor the Chinese military.

It is also speculated that India may be allowed to buy the Arrow Missile System developed by Israel with American technology. [And American taxpayer $$$$$$$] Some analysts have pointed out that the US may also try to sell the AP-1000 reactors made by Westinghouse. It is important to note that the Bush administration tried to sell the same to China with the largest-ever loan granted by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Strangely enough, these “benefits and advantages” that India may be bestowed with for its responsibility, democracy and all of that do not include even a simple acknowledgement of India’s aspirations for a seat in the UN Security Council, or its recognition as a nuclear power with a seat in the NSG.

In return for the American promises (most of which are vague and unpromising), India seems to have given some important security, energy and foreign policy concessions to the United States. For example, right after signing the deal, the Indian Prime Minister remarked to The Washington Post that the $7.4 billion India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project was fraught with risks and difficulties. The United States is opposed to this project and their objection emanates from the fact that the project could generate much needed hard currency for Iran and from the fear that it could be used for Tehran’s nuclear program.

The joint statement is also completely silent about the traditional principles and values that India has consistently voiced in the international arena such as nuclear disarmament, total abolition of weapons of mass destruction and so forth. Instead, the deal simply mentions the American welcome of “the adoption by India of legislation on WMD (Prevention of Unlawful Activities Bill).” Just as the WMD Bill was hurriedly passed before the prime minister’s trip to the US, the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 is also being amended to facilitate private investment in nuclear power generation. Dr. Singh’s call for investment may prod US companies to jump into nuclear energy production with serious repercussions to our strategic interests, national security, sovereignty, independence and freedom.

[Moses]

The claim that opening up our civilian nuclear power plants for international inspection will curtail India’s diverting the spent uranium fuel to be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium is also misplaced. It is important to remember that the plutonium for the 1974 test came from the safeguarded Tarapur plant after all. Moreover, there will always be research reactors, and underhanded methods that are not altogether unknown in the field of nuclear science and in the military-industrial complex. Most importantly, the agreement is deliberately silent about India not producing weapons-grade plutonium or not expanding the country’s nuclear arsenal.

It is highly unlikely that the United States will ensure the strict implementation of the IAEA safeguard procedures and hold the DAE accountable for all its commissions and omissions. First, a complete and thorough stocktaking is very hard to do since it will be the DAE that will be guiding the IAEA authorities.
Second, since the American interests weigh heavily in the whole scheme and they want India to do the dirty job of containing the Chinese, they may turn a blind eye to the whole process. Washington will certainly poke its nose into the Indian nuclear program for espionage and business purposes and to monitor the growth of the Indian advanced technology sector. After all, the US has expressed its willingness to “adjust U.S. laws and policies” and to “work” with friends and allies to “adjust international regimes” to accomplish the current deal. This “adjustment” culture is not an expedient measure but a time-tested oft-repeated ‘wink and nod’ practice in the political-diplomatic world.

So, one would be thoroughly mistaken if one were to think that the specified safeguard measures mentioned in the deal would finally bring some kind of transparency, accountability and popular participation (TAPs) to the workings of the DAE. In fact, the Indian Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, has already indicated that they would not agree to any discriminatory safeguards, meaning India would object to obligations that discriminated between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states. In other words, the IAEA team could do in India what it would do in the United States and other nuclear powers and nothing more.

If this “India nuclear deal” somehow goes through, the non-proliferation efforts of humanity will take a severe beating as it will justify all the clandestine nuclear programs around the world. In fact, the Chinese premier has already talked about enhancing bilateral nuclear cooperation between his country and Pakistan by selling the latter two more nuclear reactors. The legal and policy “adjustments” that the US administration promises to India will expose Washington’s hypocrisy and double-standards and seriously undercut their efforts to confront North Korea, Iran and other countries. In the international arena, clandestine nuclear program may even become a tool to win the major powers’ attention and other incentives. If India wins Western patronage and pampering through the nuclear route, next in line may be Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and others who are capable of producing nuclear weapons.

The one and only silver lining in this dark and gloomy cloud is that the international safeguards and verification may finally call the DAE bluff, and expose their stale and sordid science and copycat Chandni-Chowk-type technology. Quite understandably, the Indian nuclear establishment is very much worked up about the likely chances of subjecting their civilian nuclear facilities to international safeguards and verification. It is not that they have invented anything new or original or valuable that may be prematurely exposed to the outside world and thus it would curtail their scientific prowess or advancement. Having gobbled up unlimited amount of public money and national resources for more than five decades, the DAE produces less electricity than what the rickety windmills generate with little attention or support from the government. The latest nuclear accomplishment in India is going bananas. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) scientists have developed the technology to extract the juice from banana. According to these scientists, as much as 60 per cent of the total soluble material in a banana can be extracted and the leftover pulp can be used as an additive in confectioneries, milk shakes and baby food. How wonderful!

A simple cost-benefit analysis of the “India nuclear deal” would reveal the nasty picture that is emerging. We will have Uncle Sam sitting in our living room poking his imperialistic nose into every sphere of our national life constantly calculating his selfish gains and cunningly pushing us into our neighbor’s yard. We would be doing the dirty job of confronting China at the cost of jeopardizing our (relatively) good neighborly relations. The already anti-democratic and anti-people money-guzzling Indian nuclear establishment will continue with its lackadaisical performance and gain considerably from the newly found international legitimacy. The nuclear expenditure will increase exponentially; there will ensue militarism, arms race with China, insecurity and underdevelopment. The ordinary Indian citizen will scrape along in poverty and misery as he has always been.
- Asian Tribune -

---

Dr. S. P. Udayakumar, one of the Coordinators of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), is a freelance writer based in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu. He submitted this article to Asian Tribune.

[Moses]

With Bush's Help, General Electric Courts Indian PM, Nuke Sector

---

WASHINGTON - Just over an hour after the White House's surprise pledge to help India develop its civilian nuclear power sector, the head of General Electric, the American company that could benefit most from the policy change, sat down for a celebratory dinner.

The host was President George W. Bush; a few feet away was India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his top aides. GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, a contributor to Bush's presidential campaigns, had a coveted seat at the president's table. [Note-- also controls a large share of US broadcast media- NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, to name just 3 networks]

Bush's announcement on nuclear trade with India -- followed by a formal dinner in the State dining room -- was not just a victory for Singh. For GE, the only US-owned company still in the nuclear business, it marked a possible turning point in a years-long push to re-enter the Indian nuclear power market, which it was forced to leave in 1974 when India conducted its first nuclear test.

"In the short term, it's really business as usual. ... But if things unfold the way it looks they may, then clearly it is a significant opportunity for us," said Peter Wells, general manager of marketing for GE Energy's nuclear business.

While the policy change may benefit GE and other companies in the long term, critics contend Bush's move closer to accepting the world's largest democracy as a nuclear weapons state could weaken decades-old prohibitions against atomic arms.

"This administration's rogue, shoot-from-the-hip move to launch nuclear cooperation with India puts the interests of industry ahead of our national security," said Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, an arms control advocate.

GE was not mentioned in the joint statement issued by Bush and Singh, but Bush specifically pledged "expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur."

GE built Tarapur and one of its immediate goals in India would be resuming fuel sales to the reactors, Wells said.

Immelt -- who said in May that "all conditions are right to invest in India" and predicted that GE revenues from there could jump to $5 billion by 2010 -- was not the only American executive at Monday's dinner with a reason to court Singh.

Bush also invited Lockheed Martin Corp. chief Bob Stevens and Boeing Co.'s new chief executive, James McNerney. Bush cleared the way in March for the two defense contractors to compete for a potential $9 billion market selling combat planes to India. GE makes jet engines for Lockheed and Boeing.

GE spokesman Peter O'Toole said "tying GE's attending a State Dinner to a political contribution is misleading. We support officials in both parties and have done so for years."

"Jeff (Immelt) wants GE products picked to help solve India's challenges; who better to make the case with than the prime minister?" O'Toole added.


BUSH'S NOD TO GENERAL ELECTRIC

Washington actively promoted nuclear energy cooperation with India from the mid-1950s until the nuclear test in 1974. US nuclear cooperation and exports were later halted, freezing out GE, which built the Tarapur reactor in 1963 and supplied it with low-enriched uranium as fuel.

India has since become the second-largest growth market behind China. In a sign of its growing importance to Washington, Bush on Monday promised India full cooperation in developing its civilian nuclear power program in exchange for New Delhi's commitment to adhere to international regimes aimed at curbing arms proliferation.

Provided the Indians move quickly to fulfill their obligations, congressional sources said, it was Bush's intention to seek congressional approval to implement the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation this year.

"It's the jewel in the crown," GlobalSecurity.org's John Pike said of the Indian market. "We're the world's two largest English-speaking countries. We're the two largest democracies and we're joined at the hip economically."

Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center said Bush's decision was unlikely to benefit GE any time soon. "This may be cream but it's certainly not gravy train, certainly not for a while." Sokolski said, adding that GE will face stiff competition from non-US suppliers.


GE'S ROLE

In the runup to Singh's visit, GE held a series of meetings at the departments of State, Commerce and Energy, but Wells said the company did not explicitly lobby the White House to change longstanding policy.

"It maybe sounds a little subtle, but we try not to tell the US government what we think their foreign policy should be," Wells said.

At a recent State Department meeting, Wells said, "We wanted to better understand what the US government's view was of the situation and also to put an offer out there to them that was to say, 'We understand you've got a lot of considerations to go through here when you make a policy decision, and if there's anything we can do to help, then let us know.'" [ha ha ha! hilarious!]

In addition to resuming fuel sales to Tarapur, Wells said GE could move quickly to offer technical and maintenance services for Indian nuclear plants, and eventually bid to build new reactors. If Bush succeeds in pushing through the policy changes, "clearly we would look for US government support to advocate on behalf of GE," Wells said.

That support could take the form of government-to-government lobbying or Export-Import Bank loans for future GE projects in India, experts said.

Earlier this year, the Export-Import Bank gave preliminary approval for $5 billion in loans to help British-owned Westinghouse Electric Co. and other US suppliers win contracts to build four nuclear power plants in China.

---

Story by Adam Entous

Story Date: 25/7/2005

© Reuters News Service 2005

See also Bill Gates plans for India

[Moses]

Will India Ride Counter-Proliferation Waves?
    By J. Sri Raman
   

    Saturday 29 October 2005

    First came the famous "nuclear deal" of July between India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush. Then came the Indian rulers' vote in September for the Bush-backed resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    Now comes the news of the possible next step: official India's proud participation in a hypocritical "counter-proliferation" Bush crusade that appears to several countries more like high-sea piracy.

    New Delhi has itself projected its participation in the so-titled Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) as a logical sequel to its line on Iran.

    And the move is certainly not meant to defuse tensions in South Asia, which stands dangerously divided despite a shared earthquake disaster.

    For those who came in late, under the PSI, propounded by Bush, a group of US-led countries empower themselves, among other things, to interdict on seas those ships suspected to be carrying material for the purpose of proliferation of weapons mass destruction. The vast scope the scheme offered for violations of international laws, and creation of conflicts round the globe, are obvious.

    No principled or unreserved opposition to the PSI was forthcoming from New Delhi right from the beginning. On record, in fact, is the appreciation by the US and its closest allies of the Indian Navy's "cooperation" in the counter-terror operations conducted by the US in the Malaccan Straits of Southeast Asia in post-9/11 2001. The then far-right government of India went much further in this case than in the verbal welcome it extended to the "missile defense" scheme as modified by Bush.

    It was not the reported resentment in Southeast nations at the operations that diluted New Delhi's stand into one of mild disapproval two year later. Two factors tempered the Indian government's initial enthusiasm. One was the opposition to the PSI at the time from Russia, and the other New Delhi's own desire and demand for a more important Indian role in the Initiative. Moscow was soon to endorse the scheme, and the present Indian rulers are getting ready for a more proactive role in the PSI.

    In January 2005, India's Defense Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, addressing the seventh Asian Security Conference in New Delhi, more than indicated the Manmohan Singh regime's willingness to make India part of the PSI. The previous rulers had not bothered to consult the country's parliament before turning India into a nuclear-weapon state. Singh and his men were similarly unrestrained by such considerations while contemplating participation in an arrangement that many considered highly controversial, to put it mildly.

    Mukherjee did not stop with saying that maritime security had emerged as a "great challenge" for Asian nations and that, therefore, the PSI needed to be "examined in detail." Cautioning against "proliferation through sea lanes" as a real risk, he asserted with an eye to Washington, that the reported seizures of North Korean ships carrying missile components "could be the tip of an iceberg." We will revert to the Pakistan angle of this pronouncement n a moment.

    In May 2005, Indian Naval Chief of Staff Arun Prakash said India wanted to be "a participant in the PSI, not a peripheral member." He added that, in view of India's role "in world affairs," it has to be part of the "core group" in the unorthodox arrangement. India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran has now carried this theme considerably forward.

    In a lecture in New Delhi on October 24, Saran has clearly and categorically linked the government's PSI move to its ignominious vote on Iran. Teheran has been asking for its rights as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Arguing that the "time when NPT was regarded as self-enforcing is long past," Saran called for "active non-proliferation endeavors." These, according to him, included "national and trans-national efforts" such as the PSI.

    While asking "advocates of non-proliferation" to consider this offer of support for the PSI, New Delhi did not omit demanding its pound of flesh. Said Saran: "This support is difficult to muster if India perceives itself as unfairly treated despite its demonstrated commitment to a rule-bound system." Fair treatment, as official India sees it, would mean recognition of the country as a full-fledged member of the "nuclear club." It would imply more as well.

    Friendly media interpreters of the Saran lecture have reverted to the point made by Mukherhee and talked of North Korean supply of missile technologies to Pakistan "in return for Islamabad's transfer of enrichment technology" to North Korea. In the wake of 9/11, New Delhi had asked for a right to "pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. As a price for joining the PSI, New Delhi is now asking for measures to counter "clandestine proliferation to and from Pakistan." The initiative, in these terms, cannot advance the much-hyped India-Pakistan "peace process."

    India's peace movement has launched a campaign for the government to vote differently in the next IAEA board meeting on Iran, scheduled for November 24. New Delhi's response could not have been more contemptuous.

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    A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

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