India is vulnerable in Afghanistan

The brutal murder of an Indian driver by the Taliban is a reminder that India has plenty of hands wielding shovels in Afghanistan but no boots on the ground there. While sending troops — or walking away — is not an option, is President Hamid Karzai really in a position to provide security?

24 November 2005
The Hindu

News Analysis

Worker's killing exposes India's vulnerability in Afghanistan

Siddharth Varadarajan

THE KIDNAPPING and brutal murder in Afghanistan of a Border Roads Organisation driver has exposed not just the mindless, criminal nature of the Taliban — which is well known — but also the peculiar vulnerability of India and Indians in a country that is still in the throes of conflict despite reacquiring the trappings of a State.

The Indian government has committed itself to both helping revive Afghanistan's physical infrastructure and also to developing a full-fledged political and strategic relationship with its government. The Indian policy is largely motivated by the desire to deny Pakistan the opportunity to regain the "strategic depth" it once had in Afghanistan. The road from Delaram to Zaranj that India is building will allow Kabul and New Delhi to trade with each other via the Iranian port of Chabahar rather than through Pakistan, which Islamabad in any case is loathe to allow. Certainly, the significance of the road and of the Indian presence in Afghanistan has not been lost on the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, a section of which is still said to be working with the Taliban.

Today, India is one of the most visible and prominent political backers of President Hamid Karzai in the region. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first foreign head of government or VVIP to visit Kabul and actually spend a night in the city. On November 19, India announced that it was awarding the prestigious Indira Gandhi Peace Prize for 2005 to Mr. Karzai. These gestures are intended to convey the extent of New Delhi's commitment to the Afghan President.

"The assumption is that Mr. Karzai enjoys unquestioned legitimacy and authority inside Afghanistan and that there is nothing to lose and everything to gain from publicly and demonstrably linking India to him in this manner," says M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat with extensive experience in the region. "But this is simply not the case."

The Afghan President's writ does not really extend to large parts of his country. The result, says Mr. Bhadrakumar, is that India has allowed itself to become identified too closely with a man whose authority is being contested. "Even for his own personal security, Karzai needs the American firm, Dyncorp," a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing told The Hindu . "So how is he going to ensure the Indians working in some remote corner of Nimroz province are protected from the Taliban?"

Four years after the United States-led coalition invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban, the former ruling militia has managed to pull itself together again. One indication of their renewed ability to wage war is the casualty rate among U.S. soldiers. Of the 315 foreign military personnel who have died in Afghanistan since the time `Operation Enduring Freedom' was launched, 120 of them — approximately 40 per cent of the total — were killed in this year alone. That's up from 58 in 2004, 57 in 2003, 68 in 2002 and 12 in 2001. As for civilian deaths from bombings and shootings, this year's death toll is already close to 1,500 — the highest annual total since the ending of major offensive operations by the U.S. military which also claimed a large number of civilian lives.

The irony is that the Taliban's increasing strength — as measured by their ability to inflict casualties on foreign troops — has proceeded more or less in tandem with President Hamid Karzai's ascent up the ladder of formal political legitimacy. From being someone whom the Bush administration had hand-picked and installed in Kabul as de facto leader, Mr. Karzai last year oversaw the adoption of a new Constitution and went on to win a keenly contested presidential election. Elections to the Majlis have also now been held. The U.S., which is keen to drawn down its active military presence, is focussing its efforts on training and equipping the Afghan army. However, none of this has helped to improve the security environment within the country.

Lately, there have been reports in the Pakistani press suggesting that once again Washington is looking at the possibility of cutting a deal with the Taliban, or at least getting a section of the former ruling militia to join forces with Mr. Karzai. These moves might also explain Washington's reluctance to make a bigger issue out of the fact that Taliban insurgents continue to cross the Pakistani border with ease.

For India, which has very real stakes in ensuring Afghanistan re-emerges as a peaceful state, the challenge is to remain committed to the rebuilding of the country without being sucked into the vortex of its often destructive politics. "Our aim from the start should have been to provide aid, training and scholarships, increase people-to-people contact and take on projects, but without politically over-committing ourselves," says Mr. Bhadrakumar. India wants to be recognised publicly as a key player but it lacks the strategic or military muscle to back that up. In other words, being seen as close allies of Mr. Karzai makes Indians in Afghanistan a target; and in the absence of any security presence of its own, New Delhi is helpless in the face of this targeting.

In the run-up to Manmohan Singh's visit to Kabul in August, the Indian side had expressed some interest in increasing the level of cooperation on security matters. The Afghans were cool to the proposal, as were the Americans and Pakistanis. In any case, the fact that Washington insists all foreign forces in Afghanistan must function under the overall command of the U.S. Army effectively rules out the possibility of even a limited Indian security contingent being deployed to protect, say, Indian infrastructure projects. The small ITBP force stationed in Afghanistan protects only Indian diplomatic property and never leaves the compound. Indeed, so restricted is their mobility that the PM's special plane for the August visit brought gym and exercise equipment for them.

While there are disagreements within and outside government about how to structure New Delhi's relations with President Karzai, all agree that there can be no question of India walking away from its commitments. It is possible that the Taliban picked on a worker from the Delaram project precisely because it is so important strategically, because the road to Iran will eventually reduce Pakistan's leverage over Afghanistan. Or the choice of target may have been a coincidence, the aim simply being to tell India to stop "interfering" in Afghan affairs. Either way, it is in India's interest to stay the course. It is also in India's interest to work on allaying Pakistani fears about its Afghan policy. In pushing for Afghanistan's inclusion in SAARC and agreeing to open discussions on extending the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline to India, the Manmohan Singh government gas sought to create a framework in which New Delhi and Islamabad could cooperate with each other in the region rather than seeking to score "strategic" points over each other. The logic of these proposals must now be taken forward. It is only a genuinely South Asian approach that can lay the basis for Afghanistan's revival.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Iranian nukes: When bullying is not enough, try disinformation

The serendipitous discovery of an Iranian laptop full of incriminating details about a nuclear warhead will eventually take its place in the same intel hall of BS as the yellowcake from Niger, Saddam's aluminium tubes and those funny vials Colin Powell held up before the Security Council in January 2003. But that didn't stop India and a bunch of other governments from being taken for a ride by dodgy U.S. intelligence before the last IAEA meeting in September. The IAEA meets again on November 24. Will the world realise what's happening this time?

21 November 2005
The Hindu

When bullying is not enough, try disinformation

Siddharth Varadarajan

IN THE run-up to the crucial November 24 International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, the Bush administration has pulled out all the stops in its efforts to cajole, bully and scare the world into believing Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. The purpose of the drama is to convince not just a majority of Board members to back a resolution referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council but, more crucially, to ensure Russia also comes on board this time. China is unlikely to revise its vote and the support of India, which disqualified itself as a serious player in the negotiation process by siding with the U.S. in September, is today being taken for granted in Washington.

Relying on clever "news" leaks and tendentious opinions conveniently attributed to "diplomats close to the IAEA," (how come nobody talks of 'Western diplomats' anymore?) the U.S. has even managed to render sinister a significant act of transparency by the Iranians. The 'confidential' report of the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the November 24 Board meeting (Click here for the full text of the report at my electronic archive) notes that Iran — in seeking to answer the agency's questions about the completeness of its declarations — has handed over a number of documents relating to its work on the P-1 centrifuge design obtained from the A.Q. Khan-run clandestine network. The Iranians also provided IAEA inspectors with a one-page document supplied by the network in 1987, which shows how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms." The IAEA's report makes no comment on the significance of this document but the Associated Press on November 18 quoted "diplomats close to the agency" as saying that "it appeared to be a design for the core of a nuclear warhead." Who are these diplomats? AP says they "requested anonymity in exchange for discussing the [IAEA's] confidential report." How convenient.

Now, most reasonable people would conclude that if Iran voluntarily handed over a document whose existence the IAEA never really suspected — and clarified that it neither solicited the information contained nor acted upon it — it is highly unlikely that the Iranians would be running a secret nuclear weapons programme. After all, if one has committed a crime, the last thing one will do is present the world with the smoking gun. But then the American approach is far from reasonable. Washington's top diplomat at the IAEA, Gregory L. Schulte, promptly declared the document (which he dishonestly claimed the IAEA had "unearthed") opened "new concerns about weaponization." And thereby hangs a tale.

Curious coincidence

Five days earlier, by a curious coincidence, the New York Times had recycled an old Bush administration story about the existence of Iranian computer files allegedly dealing with Teheran's plans to build — you guessed it — a nuclear warhead atop a Shahab missile.

In the light of the 1987 document, the NYT story seems highly significant, even alarming. So alarming, in fact, that one suspects the same "diplomats close to the agency" — who would have had access to Dr. el-Baradei's draft report and known about the documents Iran had handed over — realised it would be a jolly good idea to "sex up" the Iranians' naïve display of transparency as proof of imminent weaponisation by planting, in advance, the dodgy story about warhead designs.

The Iranian warhead design story — an intelligence lemon of the Niger yellowcake or nuclear-capable Iraqi aluminium tubes variety — was first aired by Colin Powell last November and widely discredited. In March this year, The Wall Street Journal resurrected the story and in August — in the run-up to the controversial September 24 IAEA vote that declared Iran to be in "non-compliance" with its safeguards obligations — the WSJ ran it again, as did the Washington Post.

Even if the American media hasn't learned its lessons from the Bush administration's war drive to Iraq, sections of the arms control and intelligence community definitely have. In a letter to the NYT, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former weapons inspector for the IAEA, pointed out what he said was a "deep and misleading flaw" in the newspaper's story: the Farsi-language computer files in question dealt with plans for a re-entry vehicle and not a nuclear warhead. Having had access to the files, he noted that they did not carry any words such as "nuclear" or "nuclear warhead." Accordingly, he said, the NYT had an obligation to print a correction.

The correction, however, never appeared. What ensued, instead, was the exchange of emails between Dr. Albright and the NYT reporter and, finally, the investigations editor of the newspaper, who declared that the original story was correct and offered the hapless Dr. Albright a cup of coffee as compensation for his efforts. (You can read the entire correspondence here).

In his follow-up email, Dr. Albright made additional points, which are worth quoting in detail: "There is a significant difference between a reentry vehicle and a nuclear warhead, particularly as discussed in these documents," he told the NYT reporters. "The documents are almost exclusively about a reentry vehicle. It is not as you say that most people refer to everything on the pointy end of the missile as the warhead ... Based on information I have collected on these documents over the last year, the documents do not discuss a nuclear core, the design of high explosives lenses, a neutron initiator, or other key parts of a nuclear weapon. The documents do discuss that inside the reentry vehicle is a spherical object involving high explosives and detonated by electrical bridge wires. That is a far cry from a nuclear warhead design or the development of a nuclear warhead. Although these documents do discuss the best positioning of a heavy spherical object, there is no mention of nuclear fuel, as you speculate."

Dr. Albright then made a wider point about the responsibility of the media. "We can assess or infer that the object inside the reentry vehicle is likely a nuclear warhead, but the documents do not discuss its design or even mention that it is a nuclear warhead. This distinction is critical to make to the readers and the public. The first reason is to be accurate about such an important and sensitive issue. I do not have to tell you or your colleagues at the NYT that the media has a serious responsibility to present the evidence as accurately as possible. The media needs to be especially careful not to exaggerate any nuclear threat. I am afraid that your article, whether inadvertently or intentionally, has done just that. The words selected to describe or summarize information do matter."

If Dr. Albright is correct — and assuming the computer files and purloined laptop from which they were obtained are genuine — it is not just the NYT's reporters who were taken for a ride by their Bush administration sources. So were a number of countries, including India.

The warhead design files formed the centerpiece of a "highly classified" briefing given by U.S. officials to key IAEA Board members in the run-up to the September 24 vote against Iran. Among the countries briefed was India.

The Manmohan Singh government, which presumably was flattered by the American decision to put it into the "picture," has said repeatedly that it does not want another nuclear weapon state in the neighbourhood and that New Delhi's decision to vote against Teheran in September was largely motivated by its realisation that "proliferation" by Iran was a very real and immediate danger. Unfortunately, this realisation was based on flawed intelligence.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Toxic truths from the Iraqi battlefront

How come a weapon that is not considered kosher enough to have been dumped in the
ocean in 1945 is OK to dump on human beings in Fallujah, Iraq, some 60 years later? When a war is illegal, the methods of warfare are bound to go beyond what is permissible under the laws of war. But don't expect the American media to tell you any of this.

15 November 2005
The Hindu

Toxic truths from the Iraqi battlefront

Siddharth Varadarajan

Fiction: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Lt. Col. William Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, 1979.

Non-fiction: "At the end of the fight we thought back on some of the things we were the proudest of. What jumped to the forefront was infantry and tank platoon sergeants ... telling us that the artillery and mortars were awesome. At the end of the day, that is what it is all about: our maneuver brethren recognizing why we are called the `King of Battle'." Captain James T. Cobb, First Lieutenant Christopher A. LaCour, and Sergeant William H. Hight in "The Fight for Fallujah," Field Artillery magazine, 2005. (Among the 'awesome' mortars fired were White Phosphorous chemical munitions).

CONCERNED AT the environmental consequences of having dumped thousands of pounds of chemical weapons of various types into the ocean off its coast soon after World War II, the U.S. in the 1980s decided to prepare a master-list of all such dumps for future monitoring.

The report, authored by William R. Brankowitz of the Army Chemical Materials Agency, was titled "Summary of Some Chemical Munitions Sea Dumps by the United States" and was printed for internal circulation on January 30, 1989. Among the 50-plus incidents catalogued involving mustard gas, lewisite, and other nasty chemicals were the following two: Between September 14 and December 21, 1945, 924 canisters of White Phosphorous (WP) cluster bomb munitions from the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland were loose-dumped in the Atlantic Ocean along with WP smoke canisters and smoke projectiles and arsenic trichloride; and then on June 18, 1962, 5,252 WP munitions were dumped in the Atlantic along with mustard projectiles, 20 drums of cyanide and 421,157 pounds of radiological waste. Another report prepared in March 2001 titled "Offshore disposal of chemical agents and weapons conducted by the United States" by the Historical Research and Response Team of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, corroborated the same information, including the dumping of WP.

These reports are significant because they tell us that as far as the U.S. military's own inventory of weapons was concerned, White Phosphorous was classified as a "chemical munition" or a "chemical agent and weapon" as recently as 1989 and 2001. And for good reason too. The WP had been dumped into the ocean in 1945 and 1962 but was obviously considered dangerous enough for the U.S. Army to be concerned about its toxicity five decades later.

So how come a weapon that is not considered kosher enough to have been dumped in the ocean in 1945 is OK to dump on human beings in Fallujah, Iraq, some 60 years later? And even if the Pentagon believes it's OK, how come it can get away with now saying WP is not a chemical weapon?

For a war launched by the United States in the name of dealing with the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, the allegation of chemical weapon use levelled by Italy's RAI television channel (to see the documentary in English, click here, per Italiano qui) last week was undoubtedly as incendiary as the munitions in question. Quoting former U.S. Army personnel involved in the massive, no-holds-barred military assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November, a documentary produced by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta charged the U.S. with the indiscriminate use of White Phosphorous munitions and showed graphic and shocking visual evidence of the effect this weapon produced on its human victims, many of whom were civilian. According to the military affairs website, globalsecurity.org, WP "results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garlic-like odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin." Basically, the chemical burns the human body but can leave the clothes covering it intact. This is exactly what the Italian documentary showed.

In the documentary, Maurizio Torrealta asked Peter Kaiser, spokespersom of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whether White Phosphorous was a prohibited substance. "No, white phosphorous is not prohibited by the Convention on chemical weapons in the context of war operations, provided that use is not made of that substance for its toxic properties. For example, white phosphorous is normally used to produce smoke bombs that hide troop movements, and this is considered a legitimate use with respect to the conventions. But if the toxic or caustic properties of White Phosphorous are used as a weapon, then it is prohibited."

I did a Google News search of how the U.S. media was reporting the allegation and discovered that apart from the Boston Globe and Christian Science Monitor, virtually no "mainstream" American newspaper had bothered to cover the story. A few ran denials by the Pentagon that the U.S. had used illegal weapons but most chose to ignore the issue altogether. To the best of my knowledge, not even the Daily Press of Newport, Virginia — whose probe into the presence of deadly White Phosphorous landmines in Chesapeake Bay and other chemical weapons elsewhere on the U.S. east coast led to the two Army reports mentioned above being declassified last month — reported the Fallujah allegations let alone the coincidence of WP being involved.

One of the collateral benefits of defeating a country in war is that victory brings with it not just Victor's Justice but Victor's Book-keeping as well. Thanks to Paul Volcker and the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group of Charles Duelfer — which preceded him and couldn't find WMDs and so decided to find a corruption scam — we now know the fate of virtually every farthing paid into and out of the Iraqi oil-for-food accounts. What we don't know is how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in U.S. offensive operations — "We don't do body counts," General Tommy Franks had famously said — or how they died and are still dying. After Nuremberg, all aggressors have realised the value of sloppy record-keeping.

When the allegation of chemical weapon use in Fallujah first surfaced last December, the U.S. State Department swung into action to deny the charge. On December 9, 2004, its International Information Programs posted a response on its website under the section "Identifying Misinformation": "[S]ome news accounts have claimed that U.S. forces have used `outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah. Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

The State Department's response was carefully formulated because the Chemical Weapons Convention — to which the U.S. is a signatory — does not outlaw the use of WP if the purpose is to use the smoke the munition generates to mark a target or obscure ground movement or even as an incendiary against material facilities. But using it as a weapon to directly attack human beings is generally considered illegal since the CWC bans the use of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals." Thus, the ST100-3 Battle Book published by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth in July 1999, notes in chapter 5: "Burster Type White phosphorus (WP M110A2) rounds burn with intense heat and emit dense white smoke. They may be used as the initial rounds in the smokescreen to rapidly create smoke or against material targets, such as Class V sites or logistic sites. It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets." (emphasis added)

Accordingly, on the day the Italian documentary was to be telecast, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, spokesperson of U.S. military in Iraq, admitted the use of WP in Fallujah as a battlefield prop but told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!: "I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus."

Unfortunately for the State Department and Lt. Col. Boylan, an in-house Army magazine, Field Artillery, had already published a breathless and rather candid account of the utility of deliberately targeting people with WP by three soldiers who had taken part in Operation Phantom Fury. "White Phosphorous proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosives). We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

In the course of two years, the world has borne witness to the ease with which the United States has broken one civilised norm after the next. First out was the taboo against indefinite detention, then the one on torture and collective punishment, then the ban on the use of disproportionate force and the use of indiscriminate weapons in closely confined areas where non-combatants could be targeted. In Fallujah, that martyred city which will now take its place in the annals of human infamy alongside Guernica, the U.S. appears to have crossed yet another frontier. And there is no Paul Volcker to catalogue the crime.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

U.S. raises the bar on nuclear deal with India

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament on July 29 during the debate on the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement that India would "never accept discrimination". But discrimination is what's on offer. In their testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 2, senior Bush administration officials said India would not be entitled to the same kind of safeguards agreement the U.S. and the other four "internationally recognised nuclear weapons states" have with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In contrast to those agreements, the Indian safeguards must apply "in perpetuity" and preclude any future transfer from civilian to military use.


4 November 2005
The Hindu

U.S. raises the bar on nuclear deal

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: In their clearest detailing to date of what the Indian Government must do to see the United States uphold its side of the July 18 nuclear agreement, Bush administration officials have stipulated that India sign a more restrictive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency than either the U.S. or any of the other four "recognised" nuclear weapon states has done.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert G. Joseph said a "voluntary offer" safeguards arrangement of the kind the U.S. has with the IAEA would not be acceptable for India. "We indicated at the recent G-8 and NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) meetings that we would not view a voluntary offer arrangement as defensible from a non-proliferation standpoint or consistent with the [July 18] Joint Statement, and therefore do not believe that it would constitute an acceptable safeguards arrangement."

Mr. Joseph stipulated two further preconditions: safeguards "must be applied in perpetuity" and "must confirm ... [that] nuclear materials in the civil sector should not be transferred out of the civil sector."

The "voluntary offer" agreements the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China have signed with the IAEA — and their associated Additional Protocols — contain national security exclusions, which allow the removal of civilian facilities from safeguards and the transfer of nuclear materials out of them.

Mr. Joseph's testimony undercuts a key claim made by the United Progressive Alliance Government after the July 18 agreement that India has only agreed to the "same responsibilities and practices ... as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology."

A note issued by the Prime Minister's Office on July 29 had stated that India "has committed [itself] to taking reciprocally exactly the same steps that other nuclear weapon states have taken. ... An argument has been made that separation into civilian and military programmes will rob India of flexibility if that is required by unanticipated circumstances. Nuclear weapon states, including the U.S., have the right to shift facilities from civilian category to military and there is no reason why this should not apply to India." (emphasis added)

India must move first

Confirming the statement made last week by the U.S. State Department spokesman that the separation of India's civilian and military nuclear facilities was a "precondition" for Congress being asked to relax its nuclear commerce rules, the Bush administration officials said the Indian side would have to begin implementing this commitment before the administration would present any related legislative drafts to the Hill.

They also outlined a broad vision for the U.S.-India relationship of which civilian nuclear cooperation was just one part. Cooperation in the promotion of democracy in Central Asia and Myanmar, the sale of U.S. nuclear equipment and civil and military aircraft, and future Indian participation in U.S.-led military undertakings like the Proliferation Security Initiative were described as some of the strategic and economic benefits which would accrue to Washington once the proposed nuclear deal goes through.

But for the entire process to begin, India has to effect a separation between its civilian and military nuclear facilities, the officials stressed.

"Our judgment is that it would not be wise or fair to ask Congress to make such a consequential decision without evidence that the Indian Government was acting on what is arguably the most important of its commitments — the separation of its civilian and military nuclear facilities," Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told the Senate hearing. He said during his visit to New Delhi in October, he had told the Indian leadership "that it must craft a credible and transparent plan and have begun to implement it before the Administration would request Congressional action." He added that Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran has "assured me that the Indian Government will produce such a plan."

Both Mr. Burns and Mr Joseph favourably cited Mr. Saran's October 24 speech on non-proliferation where he stated — contrary to what Department of Atomic Energy chairman Anil Kakodkar had said earlier — that "it makes no sense for India to deliberately keep some of its civilian facilities out of its declaration for safeguards purposes, if it is really interested in obtaining international cooperation on as wide a scale as possible."

Both the "separation and the resultant safeguards must contribute to our non-proliferation goals," Mr. Joseph stressed. On his part, Mr. Burns said "as India begins to meet its commitments under our agreement, we will propose appropriate [legislative] language that would be India-specific and would demonstrate our dedication to a robust and permanent partnership."

Providing details of the issues raised by Mr. Burns during his last visit to Delhi, Mr. Joseph said the U.S. side had laid out "some straightforward principles." "I will not enumerate them fully here since the negotiations remain ongoing, but would like to underscore just a couple of these. For example, to ensure that the United States and other potential suppliers can confidently supply to India and meet our obligations under the NPT, safeguards must be applied in perpetuity. Further, the separation plan must ensure — and the safeguards must confirm — that cooperation does not "in any way assist" in the development or production of nuclear weapons. In this context, nuclear materials in the civil sector should not be transferred out of the civil sector."

Mr Joseph said that "several countries" had told the U.S. that India must not be granted "de jure or de facto status as a nuclear weapon State under the NPT." This was the reason, he said, "a `voluntary offer' arrangement of the type in place in the five internationally-recognised nuclear weapon States would not be acceptable for India." The U.S., he said, agreed with this argument. Only if New Delhi put forward a "credible and defensible plan" of separation would many States "become more steadfast in their support" of the plan to allow nuclear commerce with India.

Once India comes up with a "credible, transparent, and defensible separation plan," the U.S. "will be ready to engage with our NSG partners in developing a formal proposal to allow the shipment of Trigger List items and related technology to India, Mr. Joseph said. "Obviously, the number of facilities and activities that India places under IAEA safeguards, and the method and speed with which it does so, will directly affect the degree to which we will be able to build support for full civil nuclear cooperation."

Saying that he hoped India would "also take additional non-proliferation-related actions beyond those specifically outlined in the Joint Statement," Mr. Joseph noted "with satisfaction" the Manmohan Singh Government's vote against Iran at the IAEA in September. Turning to the commercial benefits, he said: "As a result of our involvement in India's civil nuclear industry, U.S. companies will be able to enter India's lucrative and growing energy market, potentially providing jobs for thousands of Americans."