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Round The World
The Inside Story
UPA SNUBS RUSSIA
By M D Nalapat
(Holds UNESCO Peace Chair, Prof, Geopolitics, Manipal Acad of
Higher Ed., Ex-Resident Editor, Times of India, Delhi)
New Delhi, December 10, 2007
Diplomatic clusters in New Delhi were taken by surprise
when the Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, announced (a
few hours before the PM's Special Flight landed in Moscow)
that there would be no agreement signed on the supply of four
additional nuclear reactors to Koodankulam to augment the two
already functional during this visit.
The Putin Administration had already been informally told of
this decision four days prior to Manmohan Singh's departure by
sources within the UPA. But it refused to believe that the UPA
Government would administer a senseless and substantial snub
as rejecting an offer of four additional nuclear reactors from
the only member of the UN Security Council Big Five active in
the nuclear trade with India.
The scepticism was multiplied by the fact that the Congress
President, Sonia Gandhi, had explicitly requested supply of
the four reactors during her talks with President Putin on her
sentimental journey to Russia two years ago. A request that
had been endorsed subsequently by her Man Friday, Manmohan
Singh.
Also, unlike the Singh-Bush deal, to which had been attached
the albatross of the Hyde Act, the Koodankulam agreement was
"without preconditions." Thus, further giving the lie to leaks
that it was somehow tied to the ongoing discussions with the
IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
Some months ago, presumably under pressure from the Bush
Administration, France had walked away from the understanding
that there would be a nuclear deal with India. Sources in
Washington asserted that the Bush team is seeking to prevent
any other country from entering into a nuclear collaboration
agreement with India, until Manmohan Singh succeeds in his
mission of operationalising the India-US nuclear deal of July
18, 2005.
Denying India any option other than the US, is seen by experts
as a pressure tactic by the Bush Administration to force the
critics of the deal to moderate their opposition enough to
allow the deal to go forward, by making it clear that New
Delhi had no option other than accepting the Bush offer.
Unlike Paris, which was quick to toe the line of the US,
especially now that Nicholas Sarkozy has been elected the
country’s Head of State, Moscow refused to succumb, and stood
by its decision conveyed three years ago, by the Putin
Administration, that Russia was prepared to enter into a
comprehensive nuclear cooperation agreement with India.
Interestingly, a similar suggestion was also explicitly
mentioned during the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao's visit a
couple of years ago. It is therefore incorrect to assert, as
the Manmohan Singh team has repeatedly been doing, that until
the India-US nuclear deal gets signed, no other
nuclear-related collaboration is possible. Moscow certainly,
and perhaps also Beijing, has the capability to chart a course
independent of the US, unlike France and the UK
What has confounded the Putin Administration is the fact that
the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission,
Nikolai Spassky, accompanied by several aides, had spent an
entire week in discussions with senior Atomic Energy
Commission personnel led by the Chairman Anil Kakodkar, just a
week prior to Manmohan Singh's departure for Moscow.
The two sides had worked on the proposed supply of the four
additional reactors to Koodankulam, and had ironed out all the
remaining problem areas. Apart from being vetted and cleared
by the Atomic Energy Commissions’ on sides, as many as 13
other Russian Ministries as well as four Indian Ministries had
examined and cleared the proposal. Even the Russian and Indian
texts had been juxtaposed to each other and matched. All that
was remaining was the signature.
Small wonder that Moscow refused to take seriously information
from New Delhi that Manmohan Singh was going to back out of
the deal. Indeed, the Koodankulam commitment was to have been
the high point of the PM's 28-hour visit to Moscow, the other
agreements being of much less importance, certainly not
warranting a Prime Ministerial visit
Spin masters in Manmohan Singh’s team have been passing the
word to a credulous media that without the US deal going
through, including agreements with the NSG and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "it would not be
possible for Russia to supply uranium fuel for the new
reactors".
According to individuals within the Atomic Energy Commission,
this statement is false. The agreement sought to be entered
into was explicitly a continuation of the earlier one on
Koodankulam, and therefore there would be no bar on the supply
of fuel to the four new reactors.
Moreover, Russian experts view with amusement the excuse that
the fuel supply would have been a casualty of India not first
entering into a comprehensive agreement with the NSG and the
IAEA. They pointed out that Moscow had only recently supplied
two planeloads of nuclear fuel to Tarapur "without any
agreement”.
Besides, they were emphatic that the Putin Administration
would ensure the supply of fuel for the four additional
reactors specified in the aborted India-Russia Agreement. They
irritatedly stressed that "unlike India, we in Moscow do not
jump to the commands of Washington".
Clearly, the going back on the Koodankulam agreement has
created a widespread perception in diplomatic clusters that
India has in effect become a client state of the US, the way
Pakistan has been since 1951. Experts within India assert that
a Koodankulam deal would have upped the pressure on the NSG
and the IAEA to agree to more favourable conditions for India,
in place of the severe restrictions mandated by the 2006 Hyde
Act.
Incidentally, because of the low priority given to nuclear
energy in the US, the earliest a US-built reactor could become
operational in India is placed at 2016 by experts within the
atomic energy establishment. Whereas the proposed four extra
units of Koodankulam would have begun generating power
sometime in 2010, given international standards of efficiency
in construction, and 2012, using the best standards available
in India's public sector
Had the UPA been serious about augmenting India's energy
supply, it would have fast-tracked and not stalled the Russian
offer of four additional reactors. It would have opened up the
nuclear power sector to India's capable private sector. And it
would have worked on signing (a more balanced than the 123)
nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia.
However, this would have annoyed the US corporations such as
Bechtel, who have close links to the US Vice-President Dick
Cheney. Thus, this was a course that Manmohan Singh chose not
to take, even at the risk of angering an old friend, Russia,
and conveying an impression to the international community
that after the fall of Tony Blair, the next White House poodle
is the occupant of 7 Racecourse Road, New Delhi. ---- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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