India wants fuel supply assurance issue with U.S. resolved first because american backsliding on earlier commitments has complicated safeguards picture.
26 April 2007
The Hindu
Detailed safeguards talks with IAEA only after 123 negotiations conclude
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: The United States may want India to speed up its discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency but the Government has decided to postpone detailed technical talks with the IAEA on safeguards until after the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement has been finalised.
India has held two rounds of exploratory discussions with Agency officials and will conduct a third round when Department of Atomic Energy Chairman Anil Kakodkar travels to Vienna next week. "But unless the 123 agreement with the U.S. is sorted out, we are not going to be in a position to hold detailed technical negotiations with the IAEA on the nature of the India-specific safeguards agreement," a senior official told The Hindu .
Why the wait
The reason for wanting to wait, say officials, is that unless the ongoing talks with the U.S. resolve the issue of fuel supply assurances for the operating lifetime of all reactors going under IAEA monitoring, there will be little sense in trying to work out the details of the "India-specific" safeguards agreement.
"Our commitment in the March 2006 Separation Plan to place all civilian reactors under safeguards in perpetuity is strictly tied to those fuel supply assurances, including the creation of a strategic fuel reserve with U.S. assistance," one official said.
Nature of agreement
Indian officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations with the U.S. note that the nature of the safeguards agreement to be drawn up has to correspond, broadly speaking, to INFCIRC 66, Rev. 2 — the standard, facility-specific safeguard template of the IAEA.
"The only difference with the boilerplate 66 agreement will be the incorporation of fuel supply guarantees as well as India's right to take corrective measures as far as perpetuity is concerned, in the event of a supply breakdown," said a senior official.
But with the U.S. evidently rethinking the fuel supply assurance issue, the safeguards picture has become complicated.
"If we have still not nailed down this India-specific part of the INFCIRC 66-type safeguards by operationalising the commitments contained in the March 2006 Separation Plan, how can India think of completing its safeguards agreement with the IAEA?"
But once the 123 agreement is settled, the safeguards negotiations are likely to be fairly straightforward, says an official.
Indian officials reject the suggestion made in a section of the media that there is a "Delhi vs. Mumbai" division within the Indian negotiating team, with the atomic scientists in Mumbai delaying negotiations with the IAEA that the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi allegedly wished to speed up.
Differences
The Indian team's mandate, they note, stems directly from the Prime Minister's assurances to Parliament. "We are at a stage where fundamental differences exist between the Indian and American sides on a number of issues," said a senior official. "Time is not going to help resolve these differences so it is not as if we gain by delaying things."
26 April 2007
Fall-back safeguards, NSG, sequencing remain areas of concern in nuclear talks
Here is the second and concluding part of my exclusive behind-the-scenes look of the obstacles lying in the way of the India-U.S. nuclear agreement.
26 April 2007
The Hindu
Fall-back safeguards, NSG, sequencing remain areas of concern in nuclear talks
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Apart from big-ticket obstacles like the "right of return" and fuel supply assurances, negotiators from India and the U.S. have not managed to bridge their differences on the sequencing of next steps in the implementation process for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal as well as on "fall-back safeguards" as a condition for the sale of nuclear equipment and material.
And lurking behind these issues is the question that worries Indian officials the most: when and in what form will the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group amend its guidelines to allow commerce with India.
The NSG factor
The importance of the last question was driven home to the Indian side when they had a formal interaction with the NSG troika of Brazil, South Africa and Germany on the sidelines of the nuclear cartel's annual plenary in Cape Town last week. Though officials say the meeting was "positive," the perception is growing in New Delhi that the U.S. is playing both sides on the NSG. "They are committed to pushing our case," said an official, "but they are also not averse to egging on some delegations to tag on extraneous conditions."
One Indian official summed up the picture at the NSG for The Hindu in the following way. There were, he said, three contradictory pressures.
"First, the U.S., which has the most stringent conditions for export to India, would ideally like to replicate those conditions at the NSG so that American companies are not disadvantaged vis-à-vis others. But there is also a push back from Russia and France, who are not interested in implementing these kinds of conditions." The third pressure was more complex, he argued. "While the U.S. is pushing to have its way, it also knows that if it pushes too hard it, it may lose control over the process to countries like Sweden and New Zealand, which would then try and overload the process with non-proliferation goals to the point that there would be no possibility of nuclear commerce." The fact that some NSG members are saying they may need to seek "legislative approval" within their own country before voting to alter the cartel's guidelines for India is not a good omen, another official said.
In other words, New Delhi fears the U.S. might lose control of the NSG, just as it feels the White House lost control over the Hyde Act process in the run up the law's passage last year.
The "pre-decisional draft" of the changed NSG guidelines circulated by the U.S. last March was pretty straightforward, running to less than one page. Though it sought to make the relaxation of guidelines for India conditional on observance of the nuclear test moratorium, there was no reference to retrospective penalties in the event of an Indian test. But with the U.S. pushing hard to include what Indian officials say are "extraneous conditions" in the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement like the "right of return," the fear is that these conditions would then be carried forward to the NSG.
Fall-back safeguards issue
One area where this carry-forward process has already happened is on fall-back safeguards, which were adopted by the NSG in June 2005 on the eve of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and notified to the IAEA a year later.
But while traditional suppliers like Russia are unlikely to insist on the negotiation and implementation of fall-back safeguards, Indian officials believe the U.S. can and will invoke any rights it gets pursuant to such an arrangement. Indeed, the report appended to the Hyde Act makes it clear that the proposed bilateral safeguards layer is not intended to cover a catastrophic situation like the dissolution of the IAEA but for situations where the U.S. feels the Agency is not doing enough to monitor the Indian programme.
"India is fully prepared to abide by IAEA safeguards and has no intention of diverting material," a senior Indian official said. "But let us think of a scenario in which the U.S. goes to the IAEA and says, `We think you should made 20 inspection visits in India this year instead of the planned 10,' and the IAEA says, `we don't have the budget or manpower so the best we can do is 12.' Then the U.S. would invoke its right under its proposed 123 agreement to verify India's compliance with its safeguards obligations. This India is not prepared to accept," the official explained. "The Prime Minister has said so in so many words."
Asked about China's willingness to grant Australia site visits to reactors using Australian uranium as part of a bilateral arrangement, officials say the two situations simply can't be compared. "As a nuclear weapon state, no Chinese uranium conversion facility is covered by IAEA safeguards and many of their other facilities are also not safeguarded or actively monitored. So instead of accepting the more stringent IAEA safeguards - which we say we are prepared to do - the Chinese have given the Australians this sop of site visits," the official argued.
Problems of sequencing
As the end-game approaches, the Indian side also says it is coming under renewed U.S. pressure on the sequencing of next steps. In particular, the U.S. wants India to take its safeguards agreement talks with the IAEA all the way up to formal approval by the IAEA board before presenting the final 123 agreement to Congress for approval.
This American insistence has also led some members of the NSG to demand that the cartel not alter its rules until the IAEA Board first approves India's safeguards agreement.
Given the political nature of the approvals process by the IAEA Board, Indian officials are not at all happy with this proposed sequencing. "Once the Board approves a safeguards agreement, it is more or less frozen, and it would be next to impossible to make changes," one official said. India, he added, had no problem bringing its safeguards agreement up to the point where it was ready to be presented to the Board but wanted to wait for NSG and U.S. Congress clearance first before submitting the document to the IAEA Board for approval.
"Quite frankly, the U.S. ideas on sequencing make no sense," a senior official said. "Is the U.S. prepared to approve the India-specific safeguards agreement in Vienna when its own Congress has still not approved the bilateral cooperation agreement with India?" But U.S. negotiators are citing the Hyde Act, which stipulates that all steps barring India's signature on its safeguards agreement must be completed before the 123 agreement can be approved.
(Concluded)
26 April 2007
The Hindu
Fall-back safeguards, NSG, sequencing remain areas of concern in nuclear talks
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Apart from big-ticket obstacles like the "right of return" and fuel supply assurances, negotiators from India and the U.S. have not managed to bridge their differences on the sequencing of next steps in the implementation process for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal as well as on "fall-back safeguards" as a condition for the sale of nuclear equipment and material.
And lurking behind these issues is the question that worries Indian officials the most: when and in what form will the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group amend its guidelines to allow commerce with India.
The NSG factor
The importance of the last question was driven home to the Indian side when they had a formal interaction with the NSG troika of Brazil, South Africa and Germany on the sidelines of the nuclear cartel's annual plenary in Cape Town last week. Though officials say the meeting was "positive," the perception is growing in New Delhi that the U.S. is playing both sides on the NSG. "They are committed to pushing our case," said an official, "but they are also not averse to egging on some delegations to tag on extraneous conditions."
One Indian official summed up the picture at the NSG for The Hindu in the following way. There were, he said, three contradictory pressures.
"First, the U.S., which has the most stringent conditions for export to India, would ideally like to replicate those conditions at the NSG so that American companies are not disadvantaged vis-à-vis others. But there is also a push back from Russia and France, who are not interested in implementing these kinds of conditions." The third pressure was more complex, he argued. "While the U.S. is pushing to have its way, it also knows that if it pushes too hard it, it may lose control over the process to countries like Sweden and New Zealand, which would then try and overload the process with non-proliferation goals to the point that there would be no possibility of nuclear commerce." The fact that some NSG members are saying they may need to seek "legislative approval" within their own country before voting to alter the cartel's guidelines for India is not a good omen, another official said.
In other words, New Delhi fears the U.S. might lose control of the NSG, just as it feels the White House lost control over the Hyde Act process in the run up the law's passage last year.
The "pre-decisional draft" of the changed NSG guidelines circulated by the U.S. last March was pretty straightforward, running to less than one page. Though it sought to make the relaxation of guidelines for India conditional on observance of the nuclear test moratorium, there was no reference to retrospective penalties in the event of an Indian test. But with the U.S. pushing hard to include what Indian officials say are "extraneous conditions" in the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement like the "right of return," the fear is that these conditions would then be carried forward to the NSG.
Fall-back safeguards issue
One area where this carry-forward process has already happened is on fall-back safeguards, which were adopted by the NSG in June 2005 on the eve of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and notified to the IAEA a year later.
But while traditional suppliers like Russia are unlikely to insist on the negotiation and implementation of fall-back safeguards, Indian officials believe the U.S. can and will invoke any rights it gets pursuant to such an arrangement. Indeed, the report appended to the Hyde Act makes it clear that the proposed bilateral safeguards layer is not intended to cover a catastrophic situation like the dissolution of the IAEA but for situations where the U.S. feels the Agency is not doing enough to monitor the Indian programme.
"India is fully prepared to abide by IAEA safeguards and has no intention of diverting material," a senior Indian official said. "But let us think of a scenario in which the U.S. goes to the IAEA and says, `We think you should made 20 inspection visits in India this year instead of the planned 10,' and the IAEA says, `we don't have the budget or manpower so the best we can do is 12.' Then the U.S. would invoke its right under its proposed 123 agreement to verify India's compliance with its safeguards obligations. This India is not prepared to accept," the official explained. "The Prime Minister has said so in so many words."
Asked about China's willingness to grant Australia site visits to reactors using Australian uranium as part of a bilateral arrangement, officials say the two situations simply can't be compared. "As a nuclear weapon state, no Chinese uranium conversion facility is covered by IAEA safeguards and many of their other facilities are also not safeguarded or actively monitored. So instead of accepting the more stringent IAEA safeguards - which we say we are prepared to do - the Chinese have given the Australians this sop of site visits," the official argued.
Problems of sequencing
As the end-game approaches, the Indian side also says it is coming under renewed U.S. pressure on the sequencing of next steps. In particular, the U.S. wants India to take its safeguards agreement talks with the IAEA all the way up to formal approval by the IAEA board before presenting the final 123 agreement to Congress for approval.
This American insistence has also led some members of the NSG to demand that the cartel not alter its rules until the IAEA Board first approves India's safeguards agreement.
Given the political nature of the approvals process by the IAEA Board, Indian officials are not at all happy with this proposed sequencing. "Once the Board approves a safeguards agreement, it is more or less frozen, and it would be next to impossible to make changes," one official said. India, he added, had no problem bringing its safeguards agreement up to the point where it was ready to be presented to the Board but wanted to wait for NSG and U.S. Congress clearance first before submitting the document to the IAEA Board for approval.
"Quite frankly, the U.S. ideas on sequencing make no sense," a senior official said. "Is the U.S. prepared to approve the India-specific safeguards agreement in Vienna when its own Congress has still not approved the bilateral cooperation agreement with India?" But U.S. negotiators are citing the Hyde Act, which stipulates that all steps barring India's signature on its safeguards agreement must be completed before the 123 agreement can be approved.
(Concluded)
25 April 2007
In last lap of nuclear deal, India feels U.S. backsliding on prior commitments
From providing waivers for its domestic restrictions to promising lifetime fuel supplies and enabling full civilian nuclear cooperation, the U.S. seems to be having second thoughts about earlier agreements.
25 April 2007
The Hindu
India feels U.S. is backsliding on prior commitments
Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI: As Indian officials complete their assessment of the latest round of technical negotiations with the United States over the implementation of the July 2005 nuclear agreement, the words that comes up most frequently to summarise the obstacles in the way are the "Hyde Act."
Under the terms of the July 2005 agreement, the Bush administration was supposed to work with Congress to "adjust U.S. laws and policies" to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India.
This commitment was further amplified by the March 2006 Separation Plan, wherein Washington agreed to assist India with lifetime fuel supply assurances, including a "strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India's reactors." In return for these assurances, India agreed to place its civilian reactors under in-perpetuity "India-specific safeguards" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Measured against these commitments, say Indian officials, the Hyde Act falls short. Simply put, it does not incorporate the full set of waivers that were implicit in the July 2005 agreement when the U.S. agreed to adjust its laws. In particular, the White House never sought to waive Section 123(a)(4) of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act (AEA) for India, which stipulates that a detonation by a non-nuclear weapon state must necessarily lead to the U.S. having the right to demand the return of its equipment and material.
As early as July 2006, when the House and Senate versions of the Hyde Act were finalised, India in fact handed over a 12-page dossier to the U.S. in which it spelt out in detail what expectations it had from the July 2005 and March 2006 agreements and how the emerging law was falling short. These concerns were reiterated to Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns on several occasions after that, including in November on the eve of the Hyde Act's final passage. At every stage India received assurances that the final law would be consistent with the White House's obligations. "But now that it is clear the Hyde Act itself is inadequate, the U.S. side is trying to reopen and reinterpret the commitments it made in its agreements with us", an official said.
Differences in 7 areas
As matters stand, major differences persist in seven broad areas of implementation. Based on extensive interaction with officials close to the process, The Hindu is in a position to provide details of the precise sticking points.
Right of Return
In July 2005, India gave a political commitment to stick to its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. But now it finds there is pressure to convert the political commitment - which India has every intention of abiding by - into a bilateral legality. The way it does that is through the invocation of the "right of return" in the U.S.draft of the 123 agreement.
In the language proposed by the US side, there is a clause which states that in the event that either side feels its supreme national interests are jeopardized, there will be consultations by both sides on the issue which occasioned the concern, followed by a suspension or termination of bilateral cooperation, and then the US side would have the right to demand the return of equipment and material supplied to India pursuant to the bilateral agreement, with compensation payable to the Indian side. This material would include any strategic fuel reserve set up with U.S. cooperation, say officials.
India feels this clause is problematic for a number of reasons. First, "supreme national interests" is too vague and could be triggered by a wide variety of issues from a nuclear test to serious political differences between the two sides. Suspension or termination of cooperation cannot be allowed to hang on so slender a thread. What India is proposing is that if India violates the clauses under which bilateral cooperation takes place - for example IAEA safeguards, peaceful use and non-diversion of imported material, failure to store imported material properly etc., then there would be bilateral consultations and in the event of a failure to resolve the matter, a suspension and prospective termination of cooperation.
Under no circumstances is India prepared to commit itself to the termination of cooperation applying retrospectively to prior cooperation, leading to the return of imported material. Such a clause would convert the political commitment not to test into something that amounted to an obligation with legal consequences.
What is worse, Indian officials say that the US appears to be playing both sides of the NSG and is seeking to insert a "right of return" clause into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines as and when they are amended. That would be tantamount to converting India's political commitment of July 2005 into something that was multilaterally binding, a kind of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) through the back door.
Asked whether India had a real fear of the "right of return" ever being invoked by the US, one official said it had implications for any future private participation in the nuclear energy industry in India.
"Which company would like to tie up its investment in a situation where the US may invoke the clause? Even if the actual return can be stalled, the US would insist at a minimum that the plant be shut down", said one official.
U.S. negotiators were prepared to give it in writing that the U.S. would not insist on the return of spent fuel. "But they are demanding return of nuclear fuel stockpiles, which is a no go for us", said another official.
Lifetime fuel guarantees
This is another major issue for the Indian side and one where there has been no movement. Indian officials are very bitter about this because they detect a clear attempt by the U.S. side to reinterpret the March separation plan. They say every word of that plan was fought over and what emerged was something both sides signed off on. But now the Americans are baulking at the language contained in Paragraph 15, which clearly links the provision of lifetime fuel supplies, including strategic reserves for safeguarded reactors, to India's decision to place its civilian reactors under perpetual safeguards. Para 15 (c) of the separation plan also has the additional cushion of India taking "corrective measures" in the event of supply disruption, which the US is now interpreting to mean "corrective measures short of termination of safeguards".
Indian officials are at pains to clarify that when the March separation plan spoke of "India specific safeguards", India was making a concession which went beyond the commitment given in July 2005 for "IAEA safeguards". The Indian understanding in July 2005 was that the latter would be of the simple INFCIRC 66 variety which India is familiar with - which are safeguards applied in perpetuity to any material which comes from abroad but which do not place the facility per se under safeguards in perpetuity.
When the US insisted that safeguards had to be for perpetuity - that facilities could not be taken out of the civilian, safeguarded sector at will - the notion of "India-specific safeguards" was crafted to build in a dual cushion for the country - first, that there would be lifetime fuel guarantees, and second, that India reserved the right to take corrective measures in the event of a disruption.
Giving an example to illustrate the problem, officials say that the U.S. may facilitate 200 tonnes of imported fuel for an indigenous safeguarded Indian reactor which is under "in perpetuity" safeguards.
If after that no more fuel is forthcoming for one reason or another, India would have no option but to divert nuclear fuel from the non-civilian side to run those reactors. Indeed, if the aim of the US is to progressively squeeze the Indian non-civilian side, then this would be one way of doing it.
Delay, suspension or termination of fuel supplies may also come about as the result of political differences between India and the U.S. on a major international issue, officials fear. "Unless we have the right to take corrective measures in the absence of fuel guarantees materialising, this will always be a pressure point on us in foreign policy terms," said a senior official.
In order to justify the backtracking from the March separation plan commitment, the U.S. side is citing both the Obama amendment and its new interpretation of Para 15.
"Full cooperation"
While India has mastered the enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production process itself, Indian officials are not comfortable with the idea that specialized components and technology related to these should be excluded except in terms of the narrow window provided by the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).
Indeed, officials say they get the feeling that the U.S. is trying to reopen another basic element of the March 2006 separation plan - the exclusion of the fast breeder reactor from the safeguarded sector - in order to incentivise Indian participation in GNEP.
But as long as reprocessing and enrichment technologies are excluded, India will continue to have the sword of sanctions and controls hanging over it. "Today, they are attempting to indict Indian officials for the import of an obsolete chip. Tomorrow, something that is bought for use in civilian reprocessing might also lead to sanctions and prosecutions", an official said. The Indian side believes that the July 2005 agreement very clearly spoke of full civilian cooperation and that the US cannot now arbitrarily restrict the scope of cooperation.
Reprocessing rights
For India, reprocessing is central to the "integrity" of its indigenous nuclear programme. "We were the first country to have reprocessing capabilities in Asia, since 1965. There is no danger of leakage contributing to weapons programme, unlike breakout countries where a little bit of cooperation might make all the difference", an official stressed. In India, all reprocessing of foreign-origin or obligated fuel would be under safeguards including pursuit. There is thus no question of any diversion, they say.
"This is not a matter of Indians being greedy or somebody making a concession to us", said one official, referring to what New Delhi feels are motivated stories appearing in the U.S. press over the past few weeks. Indian officials point to the French draft of the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement currently under discussion, which assumes India will reprocess spent fuel. The same is the case with Russia.
At the same time, Indian officials stress that reprocessing is actually only one of several critical issues and perhaps the one most likely the Americans will be prepared to make concessions on since it is a purely executive decision.
"That is why — as a psy-op — they are spreading the word that reprocessing is such a big deal. Because their game plan is probably that after India concedes ground on all the other issues, they will agree to reprocessing to make the deal more saleable in India politically — "That see how US has reversed 30 years of policy to give India something it never gave other partners'," one official argued.
Indian officials reject the argument that a reprocessing agreement would necessarily take a long time to negotiate.
The U.S. agreements with Japan, Euratom and Switzerland were complex and took time to negotiate because they all involve provisions for retransfer, they point out. "For example, the Japanese ship spent fuel to France. So do the Swiss, and then re-import MOX pellets. In India, there is no question of transfers and retransfers. So the agreements can be relatively simple."
Tomorrow: Fall-back safeguards, sequencing and the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines
Major obstacles persist in nuclear deal
Indian officials say "big problems" remain on scope of cooperation and termination conditions, with the U.S., inter alia, demanding inclusion of a "right of return" clause in the 123 agreement. India feels the officials doing the technical negotiations have gone as far as they can and that now is the time to give the process a political push.
25 April 2007
The Hindu
Major obstacles persist in nuclear deal
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Despite four days of talks in Cape Town last week, India and the United States have failed to narrow their differences on the conditions under which bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation can take place.
Indian officials say that while progress was made on the "principles of cooperation," "big problems" persist on the scope of cooperation and termination conditions. "Quite frankly, there are areas where we have not even reached agreement on what to agree about," a senior official told The Hindu .
In particular, seven issues are proving intractable in the negotiations over the crucial bilateral agreement — the 123 agreement — which will govern the transfer of nuclear equipment and material from the U.S. The official perception here is that the technical experts have gone as far as their pay grade will allow and that a political push to the process is needed. This is what Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will try to do when he meets U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in Washington, D.C. on April 30, the officials say.
Heading the list of obstacles is the U.S. insistence on including a "right of return" clause for anything sold under the agreement. Though there is no direct reference to the possibility of an Indian nuclear test, the U.S. draft states cooperation will cease if either country feels a situation has arisen which jeopardises its supreme national interest. In such a situation, there will be a period of consultation between the two sides, followed by the termination of ongoing cooperation. Finally, India will be required to return imported equipment and material — including its nuclear fuel stockpile.
This formulation is unacceptable, say the officials, because it violates the lifetime fuel supply assurances given by the U.S. and because it will convert India's "political commitment" to abide by its test moratorium into an obligation with legal consequences. India favours a more narrowly construed, prospective termination clause linked to any violation of the 123 agreement.
Other obstacles
Apart from the right of return, the major obstacles are (1) lifetime fuel guarantees for Indian civilian reactors in return for perpetuity safeguards; (2) the U.S. insistence on "fallback" bilateral safeguards in addition to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards; (3) the U.S. refusal to allow India to import components and technology for safeguarded reprocessing and enrichment activity; (4) the U.S. refusal to allow reprocessing of spent fuel; (5) the sequencing of the 123 negotiations and India's IAEA safeguards agreement; and (6) the timing and nature of the Nuclear Suppliers Group's decision to amend its guidelines to allow commerce with India.
"Real negotiations"
Despite the gulf separating the two sides, the Indian officials deny that the agreement is on the verge of collapsing. These are real negotiations, said one official, and India was going to play tough on the fine print. "We will not be hustled into giving up our positions just because the U.S. is putting out stories that there will be a breakdown."
25 April 2007
The Hindu
Major obstacles persist in nuclear deal
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Despite four days of talks in Cape Town last week, India and the United States have failed to narrow their differences on the conditions under which bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation can take place.
Indian officials say that while progress was made on the "principles of cooperation," "big problems" persist on the scope of cooperation and termination conditions. "Quite frankly, there are areas where we have not even reached agreement on what to agree about," a senior official told The Hindu .
In particular, seven issues are proving intractable in the negotiations over the crucial bilateral agreement — the 123 agreement — which will govern the transfer of nuclear equipment and material from the U.S. The official perception here is that the technical experts have gone as far as their pay grade will allow and that a political push to the process is needed. This is what Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will try to do when he meets U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in Washington, D.C. on April 30, the officials say.
Heading the list of obstacles is the U.S. insistence on including a "right of return" clause for anything sold under the agreement. Though there is no direct reference to the possibility of an Indian nuclear test, the U.S. draft states cooperation will cease if either country feels a situation has arisen which jeopardises its supreme national interest. In such a situation, there will be a period of consultation between the two sides, followed by the termination of ongoing cooperation. Finally, India will be required to return imported equipment and material — including its nuclear fuel stockpile.
This formulation is unacceptable, say the officials, because it violates the lifetime fuel supply assurances given by the U.S. and because it will convert India's "political commitment" to abide by its test moratorium into an obligation with legal consequences. India favours a more narrowly construed, prospective termination clause linked to any violation of the 123 agreement.
Other obstacles
Apart from the right of return, the major obstacles are (1) lifetime fuel guarantees for Indian civilian reactors in return for perpetuity safeguards; (2) the U.S. insistence on "fallback" bilateral safeguards in addition to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards; (3) the U.S. refusal to allow India to import components and technology for safeguarded reprocessing and enrichment activity; (4) the U.S. refusal to allow reprocessing of spent fuel; (5) the sequencing of the 123 negotiations and India's IAEA safeguards agreement; and (6) the timing and nature of the Nuclear Suppliers Group's decision to amend its guidelines to allow commerce with India.
"Real negotiations"
Despite the gulf separating the two sides, the Indian officials deny that the agreement is on the verge of collapsing. These are real negotiations, said one official, and India was going to play tough on the fine print. "We will not be hustled into giving up our positions just because the U.S. is putting out stories that there will be a breakdown."
24 April 2007
A willing suspension of disbelief
Forget about Iran, North Korea, and terrorism, the principal security challenge of our time is how to restrain the U.S. from pursuing policies that promote conflict and undermine international stability. Europe and India know this, yet do nothing about it.
24 April 2007
The Hindu
A willing suspension of disbelief
Forget about Iran, North Korea, and terrorism, the principal security challenge of our time is how to restrain the U.S. from pursuing policies that promote conflict and undermine international stability. Europe and India know this, yet do nothing about it.
By Siddharth Varadarajan
WITH THE shadow of conflict in Iran looming large, Indian and Italian editors and commentators held a seminar last week in Venice to ask whether the "inverted priorities" the United States, Europe, and India seem to have on many international issues could be resolved in a positive way. To cut a long story short, both sides were pessimistic about Washington. The prevailing mood of gloom was best summed up by Giuliano Amato, Interior Minister and former Prime Minister of Italy. "If the U.S. is for disorder, then there will be no order in the world," he told the closing session. He added that there was little India or Europe could do to convince America not to take recourse to military means. "The Americans have to convince themselves. It has to be self-restraint."
The problem, of course, is that restraint is the last thing on anyone's mind in Washington. The good folks in Peoria may be sick of Iraq but that's not stopping Beltway zealots from planning their next military adventure. When Congress voted supplementary funds for the Iraq war in March, it agreed at the last minute to delete a key clause directing the President to seek prior Congressional approval for any attack on Iran. There could not be a more clear-cut sign that another disastrous war might soon be upon us. And yet the willing suspension of disbelief continues the world over.
New threats, old threats
As the bitter debate over the invasion of Iraq recedes into distant memory, American foreign policy ideologues have once again succeeded in constructing a picture of world order in which "new threats" like terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and pandemics are more dangerous than the doctrines of pre-emptive war and regime change.
In a major speech to the United Nations General Assembly on the occasion of the U.N.'s 60th anniversary in 2005, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed that the emergence of new threats had shifted "the very terrain of international politics ... beneath our feet." In the old world, which began in 1945 and presumably ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, "the most serious threats to peace and security emerged between states and were largely defined by their borders." Today, however, "the greatest threats we face emerge within states and melt through their borders — transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation, pandemic disease and trafficking in human beings."
Depending on their own individual concerns, American scholars tend to add on to the list of new threats problems such as climate change, genocide, and human rights violations. For the American establishment, however, these are not core threats. As the world's biggest polluter, Washington tends to take a highly instrumental view of global warming. Rather than setting its own house in order, it prefers to turn domestic and international concerns about climate change into new business opportunities for American companies. As for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and human rights violations, the Bush administration's view on whether these constitute "threats" depends essentially on what is politically expedient at any moment in time.
Leaving aside the problem of what to include in the list, the discourse about "new threats" is problematic because it assumes the "old threats" to world order have either vanished or become less critical. In reality, the old threats have become more virulent and pose an even more fundamental challenge to the international system than their newer strains. Consider this list: The tendency for powerful countries to use force against smaller countries under one pretext or another; the nuclear arms race, which is now leading to the weaponisation of outer space as well as the search for smaller, "usable" nukes; the refusal to solve outstanding conflicts, especially in the Middle East, which is a major contributing factor to terrorism; the persistence of exclusion and poverty, which give rise to derivative "threats" like human trafficking and global pandemics.
Despite the ugly reality of Iraq, Dr. Rice declared in the same speech that the old threat of aggression was not the main cause of instability in the world. "In 1945, the fear was that strong, aggressive states — eager and able to expand their frontiers with force — would be the primary cause of international problems," she said. "Today, however, it is clear that weak and poorly governed states — unwilling or incapable of ruling their countries with justice — are the principal source of global crises — from civil war and genocide, to extreme poverty and humanitarian disaster."
This emphasis on "new threats," "weak states," and "rogue states" is an integral part of Washington's attempts to fashion new institutional arrangements at the global level that can more effectively deal with any present or future challenges to its hegemonic power. By selling its response to the 9/11 tragedy as part of a "Global War on Terrorism," the United States managed to receive unprecedented international backing for its projection of military power in the heartland of Asia. Of course, the U.S. suffered a setback when it invaded Iraq in open defiance of the international community and failed to find any weapons of mass destruction as a post facto fig leaf. The U.S. invasion was widely and rightly criticised at the time, but not always for the right reasons. In Europe, especially, critics decried the "unilateralism" of the Bush administration, as if Nato's "multilateral" aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Clinton administration was somehow a qualitatively better thing. The significance of the distinction was not lost on Washington.
New `multilateralism'
That is why, since 2003, the U.S. has sought to recover some diplomatic ground by using the "new threats" discourse as the springboard for a new hegemonic multilateralism. From climate change to the promotion of "democracy," to curbing proliferation and terrorism, the emphasis is on remoulding the United Nations and also creating ad-hoc institutional arrangements that the U.S. leads but which have enough of a multilateralist facade to flatter the egos of Europe and even Russia, India, and China.
To be sure, the U.S. has not always been successful in this endeavour. It managed to push through the creation of the new Human Rights Council at the U.N. but has not been able to dictate its agenda as it had hoped. In the case of North Korea, Chinese stewardship of the Six-Party process has not allowed Washington a free hand. But where it has succeeded to a considerable extent is in Iran as well as on the question of Palestine.
Despite the Palestinian people exercising their democratic right to elect Hamas, the U.S. used the Quartet's demand that Israel's "right to exist" be recognised as a pretext to subvert the election verdict and starve the people of Palestine into submission. At no point have the Palestinians been shown the external frontiers of the Israel whose right to exist they are supposed to "recognise." And yet the Europeans allowed themselves to be press-ganged into the blockade that Washington and Tel Aviv mounted against the Palestinian Authority.
On Iran, the U.S. has been successful in first subverting the European mediation effort and then using Europe's failure as a stepping stone to take Tehran's Iran dossier to the U.N. Security Council. Against their better judgment, the Europeans today find themselves caught in an escalatory sanctions process that can only end in Washington's dreaded "military option."
In the Indo-Italian seminar, Mr. Amato cited the decline of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain — whose pro-Iraq war stance has run foul of the prevailing national mood in the U.S. — as proof that the American electorate would help the world avert another conflict. "We have to rely more on democracy than on external constraints," he said.
Mr. Amato is right in hoping the American electorate disciplines its leaders but he is wrong to underestimate what Italy, Europe, India, and others can do towards the same end.
European opposition to the illegal "renditions" the CIA ran throughout Europe forced the U.S. to reroute its torture flights. If, for example, Italy were now to insist that the U.S. extradite the CIA operatives who kidnapped Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street in 2003, it would certainly push the policy debate in the U.S. in the right direction. On Palestine, if Europe and India were to take a more forthright stand against Israel's illegal settlements and Apartheid Wall, that would surely make it more difficult for Tel Aviv to avoid reaching a just and honourable agreement with the Palestinians. On the proliferation front, India and Europe need to take the lead in opposing missile defence and space weaponisation, and pushing for a negotiated solution to the Iran crisis without preconditions. If only Europe and India would stop appeasing the Bush administration at every step, they would find there is plenty that they can do to push the U.S. towards more responsible international behaviour.
13 April 2007
Balraj Sahni's 1972 convocation address to JNU
After the poison of the BJP VCD, I though I'd "cleanse" my blog by posting something pleasant and uplifting.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Assocation has just reprinted in pamphlet form the Convocation Address delivered by Balraj Sahni to the University in 1972. The speech is a classic and used to be circulated by JNU students into the 1980s because of the beautiful manner in which it reflected the humane, democratic ethos of the university and of India's progressive intelligentsia.
Somehow it went out of print, but thanks to JNUTA, we once again have access to this wonderful text.
Balraj Sahni was an award-winning actor, elder brother to the novelist Bhisham Sahni and a stalwart of the Indian progressive cultural movement. All the themes he touches upon in his 1972 speech have a contemporary resonance, but none more so than his observations on Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani and English:
I think you will also agree that the British used the English language with remarkable success for strengthening their imperial hold on our country.One need not agree with Balraj Sahni's suggestion -- to popularise Hindustani in the Roman script -- to realise that his diagnosis of the problem is spot on.
Now, which language in your opinion would their successors, the present rulers of India, choose to strengthen their own domination? Rashtrabhasha Hindi? By heavens, no. My hunch is that their interests too are served by English and English alone. But since they have to keep up a show of patriotism they make a lot of noise about Rashtrabhasha Hindi so that the mind of the public remains diverted.
Men of property may believe in a thousand different gods, but they worship only one-the God of profit. From the point of view of profit the advantages of retaining English to the capitalist class in this period of rapid industrialization and technological revolution are obvious. But the social advantages are even greater. From that point of view English is a God sent gift to our ruling classes.
Why? For the simple reason that the English language is beyond the reach of the toiling millions of our country. In olden times Sanskrit and Persian were beyond the reach of the toiling masses. That is why the rulers of those times had given them the status of state language. Through Sanskrit and Persian the masses were made to feel ignorant, inferior, uncivilized, and unfit to rule themselves. Sanskrit and Persian helped to enslave their minds, and when the mind is enslaved bondage is eternal.
It suits our present ruling classes to preserve and maintain the social order that they have inherited from the British. They have a privileged position; but they cannot admit it openly. That is why a lot of hoo-haw is made about Hindi as the Rashtrabhasha. They know very well that this Sanskrit-laden, artificial language, deprived of all modern scientific and technical terms, is too weak and insipid to challenge the supremacy of English. It will always remain a show piece, and what is more, a convenient tool to keep the masses fighting among themselves.
I should add that most students affiliated to the CPM-linked SFI at JNU boycotted Balraj Sahni's convocation address. This was told to me by someone who was a member of the SFI and a JNU Students Union counsellor at the time. The reasons for the boycott are not clear and perhaps had something to do with the CPI's tilt towards Indira Gandhi. Sahni was associated with the CPI. I gather, however, that the CPM students later regretted their decision and subsequently helped to publicise this remarkable speech..
Balraj Sahni died shortly after this speech, on April 13, 1973. Today is the anniversary of his death.
Read the whole speech by clicking on the link below.
Balraj Sahni's Convocation Address at Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, 1972
About twenty years ago, the Calcutta Film Journalists' Association decided to honour the late Bimal Roy, the maker of Do Bigha Zameen and us, his colleagues. It was a simple but tasteful ceremony. Many good speeches were made, but the listeners were waiting anxiously to hear Bimal Roy. We were all sitting on the floor, and I was next to Bimal Da. I could see that as his turn approached he became increasingly nervous and restless. And when his turn came he got up, folded his hands and said, “Whatever I have to my I say if in my films. I have nothing more to say,” and sat down.
There is a lot in what Bimal Da did, and at this moment my greatest temptation is to follow his example. The fact that I am not doing so is due solely to the profound regard I have for the name which this august institution bears; and the regard I have for yet another person, Shri P.C. Joshi, who is associated with your university. I owe to him some of the greatest moments of my life, a debt which I can never repay. That is why when I received an invitation to speak on this occasion, I found it impossible to refuse. If you had invited me to sweep your doorstep I would have felt equally happy and honoured. Perhaps that service would have been more equal to my merit.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not trying to be modest. Whatever I said was from my heart and whatever I shall say further on will also be from my heart, whether you find it agreeable and in accordance with the tradition and spirit of such occasions or otherwise. As you may know, I have been out of touch with the academic world for more than a quarter of a century. I have never addressed a University Convocation before.
It would not be out of place to mention that the severance of my contact with your world has not been voluntary. It has been due to the special conditions of film making in our country. Our little film world either offers the actor too little work, forcing him to eat his heart out in idleness; or gives him too much --so much that he gets cut off from all other currents of life. Not only does he sacrifice the pleasures of normal family life, but he also has to ignore his intellectual and spiritual needs. In the last twenty-five years have worked in more than one hundred and twenty five films. In the same period a contemporary European or American actor would have done thirty or thirty-five. From this you can imagine what a large part of my life lies buried in strips of celluloid. A vast number of books which I should have read I have not been able to read. So many events I should have taken part in have passed me by. Sometimes I feel terribly left behind. And the frustration increases when I ask myself how many of these one hundred and twenty-five films had anything significant in them? How many have any claim to be remembered? Perhaps a few. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And even they have either been forgotten already or will be, quite soon.
That is why I said I was not being modest. I was only giving a warning, so that in the event of my disappointing you, you should be able to forgive me. Bimal Roy was right. The artist's domain is his work. So, since I must speak, I must confine myself to my own experience to what I have observed and felt, and wish to communicate. To go outside that would be pompous and foolish.
I'd like to tell you about an incident which took place in my college days and which I have never been able to forget. It has left a permanent impression on my mind.
I was going by bus from Rawalpindi to Kashmir with my family to enjoy the summer vacation. Half-way through we were halted because a big chunk of the road had been swept away by a landslide caused by rain the previous night. We joined the long queues of buses and cars on either side of the landside. Impatiently we waited for the road to clear. It was a difficulty job for the P.W.D. and it took some days before they could cut a passage through. During all this time the passengers and the drivers of vehicles made a difficult situation even more difficult by their impatience and constant demonstration. Even the villagers nearby got fed up with the high-handed behaviour of the city-walas.
One morning the overseer declared the road open. The green- flag was waved to the drivers. But we saw a strange sight. No driver was willing to be the first to cross. They just. stood and stared at each other from either side. No doubt the road was a make-shift one and even dangerous. A mountain on one side, and a deep gorge and the river below. Both were forbidding. The overseer had made a careful inspection and had opened the road with a full sense of responsibility. But nobody was prepared to trust his judgment, although these very people had, till yesterday, I accused him and his department of laziness and incompetence. Half an hour passed by in dumb silence. Nobody moved.
Suddenly we saw a small green sports car approaching. An Englishman was driving it; sitting all by himself. He was a bit surprised to see so many parked vehicles and the crowd there. I was rather conspicuous, wearing my smart jacket and trousers. "What's happened?" he asked me.
I told him the whole story. He laughed loudly, blew the horn and went straight ahead, crossing the dangerous portion without the least hesitation.
And now the pendulum swung the other way. Every body was so eager to cross that they got into each other's way and created a new-confusion for some time. The noise of hundreds of engines and hundreds of horns was unbearable.
That day I saw with my own eyes the difference in attitudes between a man brought up in a free country and a man brought up in an enslaved one. A free man has the power to think, decide, and act for himself. But the slave loses that power. He always borrows his thinking from others, wavers in his decisions, and more often than not only takes the trodden path.
I learnt a lesson from this incident, which has been valuable to me. I made it a test for my own life. In the course of my life, whenever I have been able to make my own crucial decisions, I have been happy. I have felt the breath 'of freedom on my face. I have called myself a free man. My spirit has soared high and I have enjoyed life because I have felt there is meaning to life.
But, to be frank, such occasions have been too few. More often, than not I had lost courage at the crucial moment, and taken shelter under the wisdom of other people. I had taken the safer path. I made decisions which were expected of me by my family, by the bourgeois class to which I belonged, and the set of values upheld by them. I thought one way but acted in another. For this reason, afterwards I have felt rotten.
Some decisions have proved ruinous in terms of human happiness. Whenever I lost courage, my life became a meaningless burden.
I told you about an Englishman. 1 think that in itself is symptomatic of the sense of inferiority that I felt at that time. I could have given you the example of Sardar Bhagat Singh who went to the gallows the same year. I could have given you the example of Mahatma Gandhi who always had the courage to decide for himself. I remember how my college professors and the wise respectable people of my home town shook their heads over the folly of Mahatma Gandhi, who thought he could defeat the most powerful empire on earth with his utopian principles of truth and non-violence. I think less than one per cent of the people of my city dreamt that they would see India free in their lifetime. But Mahatma Gandhi had faith in himself, in his country, and his people. Some of you may have seen a painting of Gandhiji done by Nandlal Bose. It is the picture of a man who has the courage to think and act for himself.
During my college days I was not influenced by Bhagat Singh or Mahatma Gandhi. I was doing my M.A. in English literature from the most magnificent educational institution in the Punjab-the Government College in Lahore. Only the very best students were admitted to that college. After independence my fellow students have achieved the highest positions in India and Pakistan, both in the government and society. But, to gain admission to this college we had to give a written undertaking that we would take no interest in any political movement-which at that time meant the freedom movement.
This year we are celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of our independence. But can we honestly say that we have got rid of our slavish mentality--our inferiority complex?
Can we claim that at the personal, social, or institutional level, our thinking, our decisions, or even our actions are our own and not borrowed? Are we really free in the spiritual sense? Can we dare to think and act for ourselves, or do we merely pretend to do so-merely make a superficial show of independence.
I should like to draw your attention to the film industry to which I belong. I know a great many of our films are such that the very mention of them would raise a laugh among you. In the eyes of educated intelligent people, Hindi films are nothing but a tamasha. Their stories are childish, unreal, and illogical. But their worst fault, you will agree with me, is that their plots, their technique, their songs and dances, betray blind, unimaginative, and unabashed copying of films from the west. There have been Hindi films which have been copied in every detail from some foreign film. No wonder that you young people laugh at us, even though some of you may dream of becoming stars yourselves.
It is not easy for me to laugh at Hindi films. I earn my bread from them. They have brought me plenty of fame and wealth. To some extent at least, I owe to Hindi films the high honour which you have given me today.
When I was a student like you, our teachers, both English and Non-English, tried to convince us in diverse ways that the fine arts were a prerogative of white people. Great films, great drama, great acting, great painting, etc., were only possible in Europe and America. The Indian people, their language and culture, were as yet too crude and backward for real artistic expression. We used to feel bitter about this and we resented it outwardly: but inwardly we could not help accepting this judgment.
The picture has changed vastly since then. After independence India has made a tremendous recovery in every branch of the arts. In the field of film making, names like Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy stand out as international personalities. Many of our artistes, cameramen and technicians compare with the best anywhere in the world. Before independence we hardly made ten or fifteen films worth the name. Today we are the biggest film producing country in the world. Not only are our films immensely popular with the masses in our own country, but also in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, the Eastern Republics of the Soviet Union; Egypt, and other Arab countries in the Far East and many African countries. We have broken the monopoly of Hollywood in this field.
Even from the aspect of social responsibility, our Indian films have not yet degenerated to the low level to which some of the western countries have descended. The film producer in India has not yet exploited sex and crime for the sake of profit to the extent that his American counterpart has been doing for years and years-thus creating a serious social problem for that country.
But all these assets are negated by our one overwhelming fault-that we are imitators and copyists. This one fault makes us the laughing stock of intelligent people everywhere. We make films according to borrowed, outdated formulas. We do not have the courage to strike out on our own, to get to grips with the reality of our own country, to present it convincingly and according to our own genius.
I say this not only in relation to the usual Hindi or Tamil box office films. I make this complaint against our so-called progressive and experimental films also, whether they be in Bengali, Hindi, or Malayalam. I do not lag behind anyone else in admiring the work of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Sukhdev, Basu Bhattacharjee, or Rajinder Singh Bedi. I know they are highly and deservingly respected;but even then I cannot help saying that the winds of fashion in Italy, France, Sweden, Poland, or Czechoslovakia have an immediate effect on their work. They do break new ground, but only after someone else has broken it.
In the literary world, in which I have considerable interest, I see the same picture. Our novelists, story writers, and poets are carried away with the greatest of ease by the currents of fashion in Europe, although Europe, with the exception of the Soviet Union perhaps, is not yet even aware of Indian writing. For example, in my own province of the Punjab there is a wave of protest among young poets against the existing social order. Their poetry exhorts the people to rebel against it, to shatter it and build a better world free from corruption, injustice, and exploitation. One cannot but endorse that spirit wholeheartedly, because, without question, the present social order needs changing.
The content of this poetry is most admirable, but the form is not indigenous. It is borrowed from the west. The west has discarded meter and rhyme, so our Punjabi poet must also discard it. He must also use involved and ultra-radical imagery. The result is that the sound and fury remains only on paper, confined to small, mutually admiring literary circles. The people, the workers and the peasants who are being exhorted to revolution, cannot make head or tail of this kind of poetry. It just leaves them cold and per The content of this poetry is most admirable, but the form is not indigenous. It is borrowed from the west. The west has discarded meter and rhyme, so our Punjabi poet must also discard it. He must also use involved and ultra-radical imagery. The result is that the sound and fury remains only on paper, confined to small, mutually admiring literary circles. The people, the workers and the peasants who are being exhorted to revolution, cannot make head or tail of this kind of poetry. It just leaves them cold and perplexed. I don't think I am wrong if I say that other Indian languages too are in the grip of "new wave" poetry.
I know next to nothing about painting. I can't judge a good one from a bad one. But I have noticed that in this sphere also our painters conform to current fashions abroad. Very few have the courage to swim against the tide.
And what about the academic world? I invite you to I look into the mirror. If you laugh at Hindi films, maybe you are tempted to laugh at yourselves.
This year my own province honoured me by nominating me to the senate of Guru Nanak university. When the invitation to attend the first meeting came, I happened to be in the Punjab, wandering around in some villages near Preet Nagar-the cultural centre founded by our great writer S. Gurbakhsh Singh. During the evening's gossip I told my villager friends that I was to go to Amritsar to attend this meeting and if anyone wanted a lift in my car he was welcome. At this one of the company said, "Here among us you go about dressed in tehmat-kurta, peasant fashion; but tomorrow you will put on your suit and become Sahib Bahadur again." "Why," I said laughingly, "if you want I will go dressed just like this." "You will never dare," another one said. "Our sarpanch Sahib here removes his tehmat and puts on a pyjama whenever he has to go to the city on official work. He has to do it, otherwise, he says, he is not respected. How can yon go peasant-fashion to such a big university?" A jawan who had come home on leave for the rice sowing added, "Our sarpanch is a coward. In cities even girls go about wearing lungis these days. Why should he not be respected?"
The gossip went on, and, as if to accept their challenge, I did make my appearance in the Senate meeting in tehmat-kurta. The sensation I created was beyond my expectation. The officer-perhaps, professor-who was handing out the gowns in the vestibule could not recognize me at first. When he did he could not hide his amusement, "Mr Sahni, with the tehmat you should have worn khosas-not shoes," he said, while putting the gown over my shoulders. "I shall be careful next time," I said apologetically and moved on. But a moment later I asked myself, was it not bad manners for the professor to notice or comment on my dress? Why did I not point this out to him? T felt peeved' over my slow-wittedness.
After the meeting we went over to meet the students. Their amusement was even greater and more eloquent. Many of them could not help laughing at the fact that I was wearing shoes with a tehmat. That they were wearing chappals with trousers seemed nothing extraordinary to them.
You must wonder why I am wasting your time narrating such trivial incidents. But look at it from the point of view of the Punjabi peasant. We are all full of admiration for his contribution to the green revolution. He is the backbone of our armed forces. How must he feel when his dress or his way of life is treated as a matter of amusement?
It is well-known in the Punjab that as soon as a village lad receives college education he becomes indifferent to the village. He begins to consider himself superior and different, as if belonging to a separate world altogether. His one ambition is to somehow leave the village and run to a city. Is this not a slur on the academic world?
I agree that all places are not alike. I know perfectly well that no complex against the native dress exists in Tamil Nadu or Bengal. Anyone from a peasant to a professor can go about in a dhoti on any occasion. But I submit that the habit of borrowed and idealized thinking is present over there too. It is present everywhere, in some form or degree. Even twenty-five years after independence we are blissfully carrying on with the same system of education which was designed by Macaulay and Co. to breed clerks and mental slaves. Slaves who would be incapable of thinking independently of their British masters; slaves who would admire everything about the masters, even while hating them; slaves who would consider it an honour to be standing by the side, of the masters, to speak the language of the masters, to dress like the masters, to sing and dance like the masters; slaves, who would hate their own people and would be available .to preach the gospel of hatred among their own people. Can we then be surprised if the large majority of students in universities are losing faith in this system of education?
Let me go back to trivialities again. Ten years ago, if you asked a fashionable student in Delhi to wear a kurta with trousers he would have laughed at you. Today, by the grace of the hippies and the Hare Rama Hare Krishna cult, not only has the kurta-trousers combination become legitimate, but even the word kurta has changed to guru-shirt. The sitar became a star instrument with us only after the Americans gave a big welcome to Ravi Shankar, just as fifty years ago Tagore became Gurudev all over India only after he received the Nobel Prize from Sweden.
Can you dare to ask a college student to shave his head, moustache, and beard when the fashion is to put the barbers out of business? But if tomorrow under the influence of Yoga the students of Europe begin to shave their heads arid faces, I can assure you that you will begin to see a crop of shaven skulls all over Connaught Circus the next day. Yoga has to get a certificate from Europe before it can influence the home of its birth.
Let me give another example-a less trivial one.
I work in Hindi films, but it is an open secret that the songs and dialogues of these Hindi films are mostly written in Urdu. Eminent Urdu writers and poets-Krishan Chandar, Rajinder Singh Bedi, K. A. Abbas, Gulshan Nanda Sahir Ludhianwi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, and Kaifi Azmi are associated with this work.
Now, if a film written in Urdu can be called a Hindi film, it is logical to conclude that Hindi and Urdu are one and, the same language. But no, our British masters declared them two separate languages in their time. Therefore, even twenty-five years after independence, our government,: our universities, and our intellectuals insist on treating them as two separate and independent languages. Pakistan radio goes on ruining the beauty of this language by thrusting into it as many Persian and Arabic words as possible; and All India Radio knocks it out of all shape by pouring the entire Sanskrit dictionary into it. In this way they carry out the wish of the Master, to separate the inseparable. Can anything be more absurd than that? If the British told us that white was black, would we go on calling white black for ever and ever? My film colleague Johnny Walker remarked the other day, "They should not announce 'Ab Hindi mein samachar suniye' they should say, 'Ab Samachar mein Hindi suniye.'
I have discussed this funny situation with many Hindi and Urdu writers-the so-called progressive as well as non progressive; I have tried to convince them of the urgency to do some fresh thinking on the subject. But so far it has been like striking one's head against a stone wall. We film people call it the "ignorance of the learned." Are we wrong?
Lastly, I would like to tell you about a hunch I have, even at the risk of boring you. A hunch is something you can't help having. It just comes. Ultimately it may prove right or wrong. May be mine is wrong. But there it is. It may even prove right-who knows?
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has admitted in his autobiography that our freedom movement, led by the Indian National Congress, was always dominated by the propertied classes-the capitalists and landlords. It was logical, therefore, that these very classes should hold the reigns of power even after independence. Today it is obvious to everyone that in the last twenty-five years the rich have been growing 'richer' and the poor have been growing poorer. Pandit Nehru wanted to change this state of affairs, but he couldn't. I don't blame him, because he had to face very heavy odds all along. Today our Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, pledges herself to take the country towards the goal of socialism. How far she will be successful, I can't say. Politics is not my line. For our present purposes it is enough if you agree with me that in today's India the propertied classes dominate the government as well as society.
I think you will also agree that the British used the English language with remarkable success for strengthening their imperial hold on our country.
Now, which language in your opinion would their successors, the present rulers of India, choose to strengthen their own domination? Rashtrabhasha Hindi? By heavens, no. My hunch is that their interests too are served by English and English alone. But since they have to keep up a show of patriotism they make a lot of noise about Rashtrabhasha Hindi so that the mind of the public remains diverted.
Men of property may believe in a thousand different gods, but they worship only one-the God of profit. From the point of view of profit the advantages of retaining English to the capitalist class in this period of rapid industrialization and technological revolution are obvious. But the social advantages are even greater. From that point of view English is a God sent gift to our ruling classes.
Why? For the simple reason that the English language is beyond the reach of the toiling millions of our country. In olden times Sanskrit and Persian were beyond the reach of the toiling masses. That is why the rulers of those times had given them the status of state language. Through Sanskrit and Persian the masses were made to feel ignorant, inferior, uncivilized, and unfit to rule themselves. Sanskrit and Persian helped to enslave their minds, and when the mind is enslaved bondage is eternal.
It suits our present ruling classes to preserve and maintain the social order that they have inherited from the British. They have a privileged position; but they cannot admit it openly. That is why a lot of hoo-haw is made about Hindi as the Rashtrabhasha. They know very well that this Sanskrit-laden, artificial language, deprived of all modern scientific and technical terms, is too weak and insipid to challenge the supremacy of English. It will always remain a show piece, and what is more, a convenient tool to keep the masses fighting among themselves. We film people get a regular flow of fan mail from young people studying in schools and colleges. I get my share of it and these letters reveal quite clearly what a storehouse of torture the English language is to the vast majority of Indian students. How abysmally low the levels of teaching and learning have reached! That is why, I am told preferential treatment is being given to boys and girls who come from public schools i.e. schools to which only the children of privileged classes can go.
It is not necessary for me to comment on the efforts being made to strengthen English in every sphere of life, despite assurances to the contrary. They are all too obvious. It is admitted that English is too alien and hence too difficult to learn for the average Indian. And yet, it helps the capitalists and industrialists to consolidate their position on an all-India scale. That one consideration is more important than any other. According to them whatever serves their interest automatically serves national interest too. They are hopeful that in the not too distant future the people themselves will endorse their stand-that English should retain its present status for ever.
This was my hunch and I confided it one day to a friend of mine who is a labour leader. I told him that if we are serious about doing away with capitalism and bringing in socialism, we have to help the working class to consolidate itself on an all-India scale with the same energy as the capitalist class is doing. We have to help the working class achieve a leading role in society. And that can only be done by breaking the domination of English and replacing it with a people's language.
My friend listened to me carefully and largely agreed with me. "You have analyzed the situation very well," he said, "but what is the remedy?"
"The remedy is to retain the English script and kick out the English language," I replied.
"But how?"
"A rough and ready type of Hindustani is used by the working masses all over India. They make practical use of it by discarding all academic and grammatical flourishes. In this type of Hindustani, "Larka bhi jata hei" and "Larki bhi jata hei." There is an atmosphere of rare freedom in this patois and even the intellectuals indulge in it when they want to relax. And actually this is in the best tradition of Hindustani. This is how it was born, made progress, and acquired currency all over India. In the old days it was contemptuously called Urdu-or the language of the camps or bazaars.
Today in this bazaari Hindustani the word university becomes univrasti-a much better word than vishwa vidyalaya, lantern becomes laltain, the chasis of a car becomes chesi, spanner becomes pana, i.e. anything and everything is possible. The string with which the soldier cleans his rifle is called "pullthrough" in English. In Roman Hindustani it becomes fultroo–a beautiful word. "Barn-door" is the term the Hollywood lights man uses for a particular type of two blade' cover. The Bombay film worker has changed it to bandar, an excellent transformation. This Hindustani has untold and unlimited possibilities. It can absorb the international scientific and technological vocabulary with the greatest of ease. It can take words from every source and enrich itself. One has no need to run only to the Sanskrit dictionary."
"But why the Roman script?" my friend asked.
"Because no one has any prejudice against it," I said. "It is the only script which has already gained all-India currency. In north, south, east and west, you can see shop signs and film poster in this script. We use this script for writing addresses on envelopes and post cards. The army has been using it for the last thirty years at least."
My friend, the labour leader, kept silent for some time. Then he smiled indulgently and said, "Comrade, Europe also experimented with Esperanto. A great intellectual like Bernard Shaw tried his best to popularize the Basic English. But all these schemes failed miserably, for the simple reason that languages cannot be evolved mechanically; they grow spontaneously."
I was deeply shocked. I said, "Comrade, Esperanto is just that Rashtrabhasha which the Hindi Pandits are manufacturing in their studies, from the pages of some Sanskrit dictionary. I am talking of the language which is growing all round you, through the action of the people."
But I couldn't convince him. I gave more arguments, including the one that Netaji Subhash Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru were both strong advocates of Roman Hindustani, but that too failed to convince him. The question is not whether the comrade or I was right. Perhaps, I was wrong. Perhaps, my thinking was utopian, or "mechanical"-as he called it. As I said before, you can never say whether a hunch is going to be right or wrong. But the fun lies in having it, because to have a hunch is a sign of independent thinking. The comrade should have been able to appreciate that, but he couldn't, because it was difficult for him to get out of the grooves of orthodox thinking.
No country can progress unless it becomes conscious of its being-its mind and body. It has to learn to exercise its own muscles. It has to learn to find out and solve its own problems in its own way. But whichever way I turn I find that even after twenty-five years of independence, we are like a bird which has been let out of its cage after a prolonged imprisonment-unable to know what to do with its freedom. It has wings, but is afraid to fly into the open air. It longs to remain within defined limits, as in the cage.
Individually and collectively, we resemble Walter Mitty. Our inner lives are different from our outer lives. Our thoughts and actions are poles apart. We want to change this state of affairs, but we lack the courage to do anything different from what we have been doing all along-or different from what others expect us to do.
I am sure there must be some police officers in this country who in their hearts want to be regarded as friends rather than enemies of the public. They must be aware that in England the behaviour of the police towards the public is polite and helpful. But the tradition in which they have been trained is not the one which the British set for their own country but the one which they set for their colonies. So, the policeman is helpless. According to this colonial tradition, it is his duty to strike terror into anyone who enters his office, to be as obstructive and unhelpful as possible. This is the tradition which pervades every government office, from the chaparasi to the minister.
One of our young and enterprising producers made an experimental film and approached the Government for tax exemption. The minister concerned was being sworn into office the next day. He invited the producer to attend the ceremony, after which he would meet him and discuss the matter. The producer went, impressed by the informality with which the minister had treated him. As the minister was being sworn in, promising to serve the people truly, faithfully, and honestly, his secretary started explaining to the young producer how much he would have to pay in black money to the minister and how much to the others if he wanted the tax exemption.
The producer got so shocked and angry that he wanted to put this scene in his next film. But his financiers had already suffered a loss with the first one. They told him categorically not to make an ass of himself. In any case, if he had insisted in making an ass of himself the censors would never have passed the film, because it is an unwritten law that no policeman or minister is corrupt in our country.
But there is something which strikes me as being even funnier. Those same people who scream against ministers every day cannot themselves hold a single function without some minister inaugurating it, or presiding over it, or being the chief guest. Sometimes the minister is the chief guest and a film star is the president, or else the film star is the chief guest and the minister is the president. Some big personality has to be there, because it is the age old colonial tradition.
During the last war, I spent four years in England as a Hindustani announcer at the B.B.C. During those four years of extreme crisis I never even once set my eyes on a member of the British cabinet, including Prime Minister Churchill. But since independence I have seen nothing else but ministers in India, all over the place.
When Gandhiji went to the Round Table Conference in 1930, he remarked to British journalists that the Indian people regarded the guns and bullets of their empire in the same way as their children regarded the crackers and phatakas on Diwali day. He could make that claim because he had driven the fear of the British out of Indian minds. He had taught them to ignore and boycott the British officers instead of kowtowing to them.
Similarly, if we want socialism in our country we have firstly to drive out the fear of money, position, and power from the minds of our people. Are we doing anything in that direction? In our society today who is respected most -the man with talent or the man with money? Who is admired most-the man with talent or the man with power? Can we ever hope to usher in socialism under such conditions? Before socialism can come we have to create an atmosphere in which possession of wealth and riches should invite disrespect rather than respect. We have to create an atmosphere in which the highest respect is given to labour whether it be physical or mental; to talent, to skill, to art, and to inventiveness. This requires, new thinking; and the courage to discard old ways of thinking. Are we anywhere near this revolution of the mind?
Perhaps, today we need a messiah to give us the courage to abandon our slavishness and to create values befitting the human beings of a free and independent country so that we may have the courage to link our destinies to the ones being ruled, and not the rulers-to the exploited and not to the exploiters.
A great saint of the Punjab, Guru Arjun Dev, said,
Jan ki tehl sanbhaionhah jan
Uthan bithan jan kaisanga
Jan char raj mukh mathai laagi
Aasa pooran anant taranga.
It is my earnest hope and prayer that you, graduates of Jawaharlal Nehru University may succeed where I and so many others of my generation have failed.
11 April 2007
Under siege, Iran ups the ante
The 'uncontrolled chain reaction' predicted by the IAEA chief when sanctions were first imposed continues, with no terminal state in view other than conflict.
11 April 2007
The Hindu
Under siege, Iran ups the ante
Siddharth Varadarajan
ORDINARILY, IRAN's announcement hailing its mastery over "industrial scale" nuclear fuel enrichment should have occasioned neither surprise nor alarm. After all, the Iranian plan to run up to 3,000 centrifuges before eventually installing 50,000 more was well known. And the multiple cascades of centrifuges at Natanz into which Iranian scientists are said to have injected UF6 gas are all operating under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA continues to have access to the Natanz facility under its bilateral safeguards agreement with Iran. Its inspectors will be able to verify the number of centrifuges into which UF6 feedstock was introduced, tabulate a material balance to ensure no safeguarded material has gone astray, and confirm that uranium is being enriched only up to permissible levels.
And yet, these are not ordinary times. With the United States hell-bent on confrontation, Iran's announcement is being flashed around the world as proof that a nuclear bomb "could" be produced soon. The same journalists and analysts who served as Washington's accomplices in Iraq are back in business, egging the war party on again. Last week, Brian Ross of ABC News ran a breathless exclusive quoting unnamed sources about how the new centrifuges mean Iran "could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009." And who is Brian Ross? As salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald reminds us in an excellent bit of media forensics, Mr. Ross and ABC "were the driving force, really the exclusive force, behind news reports strongly suggesting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the anthrax attacks on the U.S." in 2001, a story which later segued into the general drive for war in 2003.
In theory, as every western news story on Iran reminds us, "uranium enriched to low levels can fuel reactors; if enriched to high levels, it can fuel nuclear weapons." But in reality, there is no danger of Natanz enriching uranium to weapon-grade levels so long as the facility remains under safeguards. In other words, unless Iran has another large facility hidden somewhere in the desert with thousands of centrifuges spinning away — and manages to keep it undetected for at least a couple of years — Tehran has no way of accumulating enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a nuclear weapons programme.
Iran's failure to satisfy the IAEA about the work it did on the P-2 centrifuge design purchased from the A.Q. Khan network has led some analysts to suggest it could have built a secret P-2 facility to service a weapons programme. But there are three reasons why this is unlikely. First, the poor quality of Iranian yellowcake and UF6, as well as Iran's inability fully to master even the more basic P-1 centrifuge technology at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz is an open secret within the international arms control community. A hidden facility assumes a certain level of mastery over the difficult enrichment process. If just two cascades of P-1 centrifuges at the PFEP have been plagued by crashes and other problems, there is little chance Iran could have managed to construct and run a facility with the more advanced P-2.
Secondly, despite the fact that a country with a vast hidden facility is unlikely to take on the risk of discovery by surprise inspection, Iran voluntarily accepted the more stringent inspection regime of the Additional Protocol for two years till January 2006. During this period, when the IAEA essentially had a `go as you please pass' to any location in Iran at short notice, no clandestine nuclear facilities were discovered. Given the fact that 24x7, wall-to-wall satellite imagery of Iran has been available to the National Security Agency for several years now, Washington had the ability to send the IAEA to any set of coordinates that looked suspicious. Yet nothing turned up.
Thirdly, the existence of a secret enrichment facility presupposes the existence of secret feedstock. In other words, Iran would need to have parallel stocks of yellowcake or UF6 because IAEA safeguards on declared stocks mean no diversion is possible. And so far, there is no evidence that such parallel stocks exist. Of course, in 2003 the IAEA reported Iran's failure to declare the one-time import of yellowcake from China as well as a number of other enrichment and plutonium separation-related experiments. It is these omissions — which were arguably no more dangerous than the `experiments' South Korea and Taiwan concealed from the IAEA for years — that formed the basis for the Agency's Board of Governors to declare Iran in violation of its safeguards agreement in September 2005. But since 2003, all those Iranian omissions have been resolved and the Chinese yellowcake is being treated as a "routine" safeguards issue by the IAEA.
"You can't bomb knowledge"
There is, of course, the possibility that the Iranians could use the safeguarded low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced at Natanz as feedstock for HEU. This would presuppose a termination of the Iranian safeguards agreement with the IAEA as well as Iran's renunciation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). But this problem of "breakout" is not unique to Iran alone. There are dozens of countries that could walk out of the NPT and utilise existing safeguarded stocks of LEU, HEU or plutonium for eventual weapons production. The reason nobody assumes they ever will is because these countries are all embedded in a wider political and security environment that makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons unnecessary and even counter-productive.
Iran is treated with suspicion because it finds itself beset with insecurity but the irony is that the international community is doing little to make Tehran feel more secure. Its greatest enemy, the U.S. — which has sought the ouster of the Islamic regime ever since the 1979 revolution and has sanctioned its oil and gas industry for years — is today in military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington and Tel Aviv frequently invoke the spectre of war. Because of the Iraq quagmire, the U.S. realises it needs to properly pace and calibrate the use of military means against Tehran. Above all, it needs a plausible casus belli, which can help transcend the suspicion the Iraq disaster has generated. And that casus belli is to provoke Iran into downgrading its ties with the IAEA and breaking out of the NPT. The sanctions that the Bush administration has pushed through the U.N., then, are not aimed at forcing Iran to climb down. Their aim is to force Tehran to climb up the ladder of confrontation.
As they plan their next steps, the Iranian leadership will no doubt be aware of what Washington's diplomatic strategy is. Tuesday's announcement is a clear sign that Iran is not going to be coerced into abandoning its enrichment programme. For all their apparent grandstanding, the Iranians have been rather astute in defending their legitimate right to a civilian nuclear programme and fuel cycle. By upping the ante every time they come under unreasonable pressure, they have managed to create new facts on the ground. In turn, these facts make it more difficult for Washington to achieve its goals through "peaceful" coercion such as arm-twisting Iran's negotiating partners or imposing sanctions. It is as if, having correctly read America's aggressive military intentions, Iran has decided not to give the Pentagon the luxury of choosing a time for attack best suited to itself. By inducing a premature delivery, Iran hopes the war the U.S. is planning will be stillborn.
In 2005, Iran responded to the European-3's insulting proposal to abandon enrichment altogether by ending its voluntary suspension of enrichment. When the IAEA sent its file to the U.N. Security Council, it suspended its acceptance of the Additional Protocol. All the while, Iran has been running its centrifuges and is now on the verge of going "industrial scale." In an interview to Financial Times in February this year, IAEA Director General Mohammad el-Baradei gently hinted that the U.S. was wasting precious time by insisting Iran suspend its enrichment programme before a dialogue could begin. Iran had now acquired important technical know-how from running its pilot nuclear programme, he told FT, and there was no going back now. "You cannot bomb knowledge," he said.
Dr. el-Baradei is right. Even if Iran decides to go for nuclear weapons, it would be an act of supreme folly for America to think war is an option, let alone an answer. Iran says it does not want the bomb. Iran says it is interested in a wider dialogue aimed at increasing security and confidence in West Asia. It is high time the U.S. abandoned its insistence on preconditions and started talking.
11 April 2007
The Hindu
Under siege, Iran ups the ante
Siddharth Varadarajan
ORDINARILY, IRAN's announcement hailing its mastery over "industrial scale" nuclear fuel enrichment should have occasioned neither surprise nor alarm. After all, the Iranian plan to run up to 3,000 centrifuges before eventually installing 50,000 more was well known. And the multiple cascades of centrifuges at Natanz into which Iranian scientists are said to have injected UF6 gas are all operating under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA continues to have access to the Natanz facility under its bilateral safeguards agreement with Iran. Its inspectors will be able to verify the number of centrifuges into which UF6 feedstock was introduced, tabulate a material balance to ensure no safeguarded material has gone astray, and confirm that uranium is being enriched only up to permissible levels.
And yet, these are not ordinary times. With the United States hell-bent on confrontation, Iran's announcement is being flashed around the world as proof that a nuclear bomb "could" be produced soon. The same journalists and analysts who served as Washington's accomplices in Iraq are back in business, egging the war party on again. Last week, Brian Ross of ABC News ran a breathless exclusive quoting unnamed sources about how the new centrifuges mean Iran "could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009." And who is Brian Ross? As salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald reminds us in an excellent bit of media forensics, Mr. Ross and ABC "were the driving force, really the exclusive force, behind news reports strongly suggesting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the anthrax attacks on the U.S." in 2001, a story which later segued into the general drive for war in 2003.
In theory, as every western news story on Iran reminds us, "uranium enriched to low levels can fuel reactors; if enriched to high levels, it can fuel nuclear weapons." But in reality, there is no danger of Natanz enriching uranium to weapon-grade levels so long as the facility remains under safeguards. In other words, unless Iran has another large facility hidden somewhere in the desert with thousands of centrifuges spinning away — and manages to keep it undetected for at least a couple of years — Tehran has no way of accumulating enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a nuclear weapons programme.
Iran's failure to satisfy the IAEA about the work it did on the P-2 centrifuge design purchased from the A.Q. Khan network has led some analysts to suggest it could have built a secret P-2 facility to service a weapons programme. But there are three reasons why this is unlikely. First, the poor quality of Iranian yellowcake and UF6, as well as Iran's inability fully to master even the more basic P-1 centrifuge technology at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz is an open secret within the international arms control community. A hidden facility assumes a certain level of mastery over the difficult enrichment process. If just two cascades of P-1 centrifuges at the PFEP have been plagued by crashes and other problems, there is little chance Iran could have managed to construct and run a facility with the more advanced P-2.
Secondly, despite the fact that a country with a vast hidden facility is unlikely to take on the risk of discovery by surprise inspection, Iran voluntarily accepted the more stringent inspection regime of the Additional Protocol for two years till January 2006. During this period, when the IAEA essentially had a `go as you please pass' to any location in Iran at short notice, no clandestine nuclear facilities were discovered. Given the fact that 24x7, wall-to-wall satellite imagery of Iran has been available to the National Security Agency for several years now, Washington had the ability to send the IAEA to any set of coordinates that looked suspicious. Yet nothing turned up.
Thirdly, the existence of a secret enrichment facility presupposes the existence of secret feedstock. In other words, Iran would need to have parallel stocks of yellowcake or UF6 because IAEA safeguards on declared stocks mean no diversion is possible. And so far, there is no evidence that such parallel stocks exist. Of course, in 2003 the IAEA reported Iran's failure to declare the one-time import of yellowcake from China as well as a number of other enrichment and plutonium separation-related experiments. It is these omissions — which were arguably no more dangerous than the `experiments' South Korea and Taiwan concealed from the IAEA for years — that formed the basis for the Agency's Board of Governors to declare Iran in violation of its safeguards agreement in September 2005. But since 2003, all those Iranian omissions have been resolved and the Chinese yellowcake is being treated as a "routine" safeguards issue by the IAEA.
"You can't bomb knowledge"
There is, of course, the possibility that the Iranians could use the safeguarded low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced at Natanz as feedstock for HEU. This would presuppose a termination of the Iranian safeguards agreement with the IAEA as well as Iran's renunciation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). But this problem of "breakout" is not unique to Iran alone. There are dozens of countries that could walk out of the NPT and utilise existing safeguarded stocks of LEU, HEU or plutonium for eventual weapons production. The reason nobody assumes they ever will is because these countries are all embedded in a wider political and security environment that makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons unnecessary and even counter-productive.
Iran is treated with suspicion because it finds itself beset with insecurity but the irony is that the international community is doing little to make Tehran feel more secure. Its greatest enemy, the U.S. — which has sought the ouster of the Islamic regime ever since the 1979 revolution and has sanctioned its oil and gas industry for years — is today in military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington and Tel Aviv frequently invoke the spectre of war. Because of the Iraq quagmire, the U.S. realises it needs to properly pace and calibrate the use of military means against Tehran. Above all, it needs a plausible casus belli, which can help transcend the suspicion the Iraq disaster has generated. And that casus belli is to provoke Iran into downgrading its ties with the IAEA and breaking out of the NPT. The sanctions that the Bush administration has pushed through the U.N., then, are not aimed at forcing Iran to climb down. Their aim is to force Tehran to climb up the ladder of confrontation.
As they plan their next steps, the Iranian leadership will no doubt be aware of what Washington's diplomatic strategy is. Tuesday's announcement is a clear sign that Iran is not going to be coerced into abandoning its enrichment programme. For all their apparent grandstanding, the Iranians have been rather astute in defending their legitimate right to a civilian nuclear programme and fuel cycle. By upping the ante every time they come under unreasonable pressure, they have managed to create new facts on the ground. In turn, these facts make it more difficult for Washington to achieve its goals through "peaceful" coercion such as arm-twisting Iran's negotiating partners or imposing sanctions. It is as if, having correctly read America's aggressive military intentions, Iran has decided not to give the Pentagon the luxury of choosing a time for attack best suited to itself. By inducing a premature delivery, Iran hopes the war the U.S. is planning will be stillborn.
In 2005, Iran responded to the European-3's insulting proposal to abandon enrichment altogether by ending its voluntary suspension of enrichment. When the IAEA sent its file to the U.N. Security Council, it suspended its acceptance of the Additional Protocol. All the while, Iran has been running its centrifuges and is now on the verge of going "industrial scale." In an interview to Financial Times in February this year, IAEA Director General Mohammad el-Baradei gently hinted that the U.S. was wasting precious time by insisting Iran suspend its enrichment programme before a dialogue could begin. Iran had now acquired important technical know-how from running its pilot nuclear programme, he told FT, and there was no going back now. "You cannot bomb knowledge," he said.
Dr. el-Baradei is right. Even if Iran decides to go for nuclear weapons, it would be an act of supreme folly for America to think war is an option, let alone an answer. Iran says it does not want the bomb. Iran says it is interested in a wider dialogue aimed at increasing security and confidence in West Asia. It is high time the U.S. abandoned its insistence on preconditions and started talking.
10 April 2007
That communal BJP CD: Videograbs
I finally figured out how to save images off a video disc. [Pause the film and press CTRL-i whenever you want to grab an image]. So here goes a series of images from the BJP election CD whose transcript I uploaded two days ago. First section: Opening credits, introducing Masterji
Second section: The 'cow slaughter' scene
Third section: Muslims are taking over, you'll have to grow beards
Fourth section: The abduction and forced conversion of a Hindu girl
Final section: closing credits, montage
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