The 123 talks did not go well

Reuters reports Nicholas Burns -- the American Under Secretary of State and the Bush administration’s point man in its nuclear dealings with India -- sounding less than enthusiastic about the last round of bilateral talks on the so-called ‘123 Agreement’, the bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation agreement that the two sides must sign and implement in order to consummate their landmark July 2005 deal.

"We were hopeful that we would be able to make progress to close out all of the issues on the 123 (agreement) talks. Some progress was made but in our view, not enough."…

"The United States has done its part. We've met every commitment we said we would meet. ... Right now I would say the ball is in India's court." …

"Frankly, we negotiated two very good agreements in July '05 and March '06 with the Indian government. ... Now it's time for India to expedite the 123 talks as well as expedite talks with the IAEA towards a safeguards agreement."

The Indian side had presented its draft of the 123 to Washington in early February, which the Bush administration clearly didn’t like. But given the perception in New Delhi is that it is the U.S. which has moved the goalposts since July 2005, Indian negotiators are not likely to take too kindly to Burns’s suggestion that it is India which is not fulfilling its commitments.

Fissile treaty is India's next challenge

If the Conference on Disarmament really manages to get its act together as Reaching Critical Will and Jeffrey Lewis of armscontrolwonk and the Belfer Center reckon it might, the Indian promissory note on supporting the U.S. on the Fissile Material Cutoff treaty is likely to be encashed sooner than New Delhi had assumed.

For the record, Indian officials disagree with RCW's characterisation of the Indian position as showing "resistance to the proposal by indicating intentions to make changes that would disrupt the current delicate balance". Given its differences with the U.S. on verification, India is not exactly jumping with joy at the prospect of the CD moving forward.n But at the same time, New Delhi is unlikely to block any emerging consensus. For that, look to Egypt or China.

A foretaste of Beijing's attitude came on Tuesday when its ambassador asked the CD president Sarala Fernando whether the agenda for the work of the "coordinator" on issues relating to the prevention of an arms race in outer space would include the negotiation of a treaty, something that is a red rag for the U.S. despite -- or perhaps because of -- the recent Chinese ASAT test.


28 March 2007
The Hindu

Fissile treaty is India's next challenge
New front in struggle to conclude its nuclear pact with the U.S.

Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: With a proposal to kick-start work on a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons rapidly gathering traction, India is bracing itself for the earlier-than-expected opening of a new front in the struggle to conclude its nuclear agreement with the United States.

Draft proposal

On March 23, the Sri Lankan president of the U.N.'s Conference on Disarmament (CD) circulated a draft proposal to end the stalemate that has plagued the Geneva-based multilateral forum for more than a decade.

The proposal involves moving simultaneously on four arms-control fronts, including negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) and "substantive discussions" on issues relating to the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS).

The new proposal has yet to be approved by all but diplomats and disarmament watchers are already describing it as the CD's "best chance in 10 years" to finally get the international arms control agenda moving again. The U.S., Russia and the European Union have agreed to it. India, too, is on board provided the rules of procedure and "fundamental parameters" in respect of the FMCT are clarified.

Clarification sought

China, which earlier wanted the CD's work on PAROS to lead to a treaty placing controls on the weaponisation of space, has sought clarification on a number of points.

While senior officials say India will not stand in the way of any proposal that will allow the CD to start functioning again, the prospect of substantive FMCT negotiations poses a diplomatic challenge: how to square India's July 2005 commitment to work with Washington "for the conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty [FMCT]" with the fact that both India and the U.S. have very different notions of what such a treaty should look like.

Last December, when the U.S. Congress passed the Hyde Act enabling nuclear commerce with India, it added two seemingly minor riders — that India must be working "actively" for the "early" conclusion of such a treaty. Though these additions irritated Indian officials, they let it pass since the CD had been in limbo since 1996, the year it finished drafting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and there was little prospect of a breakthrough.

In 2006, however, the U.S. upped the ante by presenting a draft FMCT to the CD along with an ultimatum threatening Washington's withdrawal from the forum in the event that negotiations did not open soon.

Different stand

New Delhi's stand on the FMCT differs from the U.S. in one crucial respect: verification. Indeed, in his response to the new CD proposal on Friday, Indian ambassador Jayant Prasad reiterated India's "consistent position... of the importance we attach to the negotiation of a universal, non-discriminatory and verifiable treaty." There should, therefore, be "sufficient understanding on fundamental parameters before formal negotiations are launched," he added.

The draft proposal before the CD speaks of negotiations "without any preconditions, on a non-discriminatory and multilateral" FMCT. Since there is no reference to a "verifiable" FMCT, India says the words "without any preconditions" should be constructed to not rule anything in or out. In other words, once negotiations start, countries favouring verification would have the right to push for its inclusion.

"But we want the CD President to clarify these issues so that India's negotiating position is not compromised," a senior official told The Hindu .

India's insistence

In 2004, the Bush administration reversed America's earlier position on including effective verification measures. But Indian officials say India will insist on an FMCT being "internationally and effectively verifiable" besides being prospective rather than retrospective so that existing stocks of fissile material are not affected by accession to such a treaty.

The CD was in limbo all these years because the U.S. wanted the focus to be kept only on fissile material and opposed the creation of four subsidiary bodies separately tasked with negotiating an FMCT, a PAROS treaty, nuclear disarmament and security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states. Creative attempts were made over the years to reformulate this four-point agenda but Washington rejected these.

The fudge that has been worked out this time round is to farm out the four agenda items to "coordinators" who will preside over "substantive discussions" on the other three arms control issues "without prejudice to future work and negotiations." This formulation, diplomats say, is open enough to admit the possibility of, say, considering a treaty banning the weaponisation of space. But India still wants the rules of procedure clarified.

While welcoming the prospect of the CD getting back to work, Indian analysts said the FMCT negotiations would not be easy.

"India should assess the issue based on its national interest," said K. Subrahmanyam, former convener of the National Security Council Advisory Board. "First of all, someone in authority has to be able to take a stand on whether the existing stocks of fissile material are adequate for strategic purposes," he said. If the stocks are adequate, there should be no problem in going towards an FMCT. "If a fissile cut-off treaty is added on to other arms control measures, this would help stabilise the international system."

"Running a risk"

Mr. Subrahmanyam acknowledged that by insisting on verifiability, India ran the risk of working counter to the U.S. in the FMCT negotiations. "But given the wider neighbourhood we are in — Pakistan, North Korea, Iran — I would insist that an FMCT be verifiable." Arundhati Ghose, a former Indian ambassador to the CD, said that since an FMCT was first mooted in 1993 and India subsequently sponsored a resolution calling for such a treaty, "one must presume we have produced enough fissile material for a credible minimum deterrent."

But on verification, Ms. Ghose said the demand for verifiability was essentially a tactic to postpone the FMCT and that lack of verification would not hurt India's interests.

No place to hide as nuclear deal enters last lap

The `123 agreement' is important not in order to facilitate nuclear imports from the U.S. but because it will form the template for changes to the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines. In the final lap, India cannot afford to abandon its core concerns.








24 March 2007
The Hindu

No place to hide as nuclear deal enters last lap

Siddharth Varadarajan

AS INDIA enters the next — and perhaps final — round of talks with the United States over the conditions under which bilateral nuclear trade will take place, its negotiators face a peculiar challenge.

The enabling legislation passed by Congress last December — the Hyde Act — tagged on so many onerous conditions as to render any voluntary purchase by India of U.S. nuclear equipment or fuel extremely unlikely. Yet, even if it has no desire to buy American, India cannot afford to take the negotiations over bilateral nuclear cooperation lightly because Washington will try and replicate at the international level tomorrow all the exclusions and restrictions it manages to impose on New Delhi today. Though the strategic benefit from pushing the nuclear deal with India is payoff enough for the U.S., the Bush administration will not allow American vendors to lose out to Russian and French companies in the multi-billion dollar orders that India is expected to generate once it is opened up to nuclear trade.

The precise contours of the bilateral cooperation agreement — called the `123 agreement' after Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act — are important because the U.S. is still trying to withhold "full" civilian nuclear cooperation from India on three major fronts. The Hyde Act excludes the sale of equipment related to enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy water production to India, and the White House also insists India will not be given prior consent to reprocess spent fuel produced from American-origin equipment or low-enriched uranium (LEU). Thirdly, the U.S. side does not want India to be able to stockpile nuclear fuel.

In addition, the U.S. wants to use the 123 agreement to convert India's non-binding unilateral voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing into a permanent, binding condition for the international nuclear supplies spigot staying open.

Though the Obama amendment to the Hyde Act restricts the fuel guarantees the U.S. can give India in exchange for placing its civilian reactors under safeguards in perpetuity, it has always been the administration's practice to limit fuel supplies to reactor operating requirements. For example, Article IV of the U.S.-Turkey 123 agreement signed in 2000 and ratified by the Turkish parliament last year declares that the amount of U.S. fuel provided "shall not at any time be in excess of that quantity that the parties agree is necessary for ... the efficient and continuous operation of reactors." Not surprisingly, this is the language Washinton is offering India.

On the spent fuel issue too, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was crystal clear in an interview to CNN on December 8, 2006. Asked whether the U.S. would allow India to reprocess spent fuel in the manner in which the 123 agreements with Japan, Euratom, and Switzerland allow reprocessing of spent fuel, Mr. Burns said: "The great majority of countries do not [have U.S. permission]. It requires a very intricately negotiated and lengthy agreement with the United States, and India does not have one yet. And, so, it is theoretically possible for the future, but currently India will be treated as all other countries are treated." In other words, no.

Switzerland is an interesting case because its earlier 123 agreement signed in 1965 — which provided for only case-by-case approval — led to considerable delays in reprocessing. In India's case, the `delay' in U.S. approval for reprocessing the spent fuel at Tarapur has stretched to over 40 years! In 1997, the U.S. gave Berne advance, long-term consent to transfer spent fuel to France and Britain for reprocessing and conversion to mixed oxide fuel (MOX) and for the return to Switzerland of MOX pellets.

The 1985 U.S-China agreement also deviates from the default "case by case" setting. Despite noting that China has "no intention" of reprocessing U.S.-origin or U.S.-obligated spent fuel, the agreement does not prohibit reprocessing and actually stipulates that the two countries will "promptly hold consultations to agree on a mutually acceptable arrangement" if China should seek to alter U.S.-origin material. Moreover, it commits the U.S. to "consider such activities favourably" and even provides for "interim" reprocessing by China pending a long-term arrangement.

Unlike China, India is stating up front that it has every intention of reprocessing; and yet the U.S. is unwilling to grant long-term consent.

From 123 to NSG

As of now, potential nuclear partners like Russia are not insisting on any restrictive conditions, provided the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group amends its basic guidelines to allow sales to India. The Russian contract for the construction of two 1000 MWe VVER reactors at Koodankulam contains no extraneous clauses. India has the right to reprocess the spent fuel produced. Russia has provided a sovereign guarantee for LEU supplies over the reactors' lifetime and there is no termination clause in the event of an Indian nuclear test. Similarly, the `Protocol of Intent' (PoI) for four additional Russian reactors signed during the visit to Delhi of President Vladimir Putin in January includes none of the restrictions the U.S. would like to impose on India. Why the Indian side turned down the Russian offer of a firm Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the four reactors -- as reported by Bharat Bhushan in The Telegraph on January 24 -- and opted instead for a watered down PoI is perplexing, given that an IGA could have set a positive benchmark for the 123 agreement with the U.S.

Apart from the 123 agreement, there are other hurdles to cross, such as the American template for the "India-specific" safeguards to be worked out with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Finally, the U.S. is also insisting the separation of Indian civilian and military nuclear "programs" must prohibit the "routine" or "frequent" rotation of personnel between the two sides as well. India denies it is under any obligation to firewall personnel but the pressure will mount when it is time for the U.S. President to make a "determination" on India's fulfilment of obligations specified by the Hyde Act.

Though New Delhi officially welcomed the passage of the Hyde Act, senior officials now privately concede its text has all but killed any prospect of India making major nuclear purchases from American firms. The only solace is that once the NSG changes its rules, India will be free to buy from other suppliers, a senior official told this writer. The official went on to say it was better to settle for a "passing grade like 60 or 70 per cent" in the 123 talks in order to be able to pass the NSG test. Other officials disagree, arguing that settling for anything less than what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has himself outlined would cost India dearly once the NSG starts considering its rule change.

In July 2005, the U.S. agreed to work with its allies to "adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India." But the Bush administration has sequenced the entire process so as to ensure the "adjustment" that emerges at the NSG closely mirrors its own domestic restrictions. That is why Washington has made only perfunctory efforts so far, despite the passage of the Hyde Act, to canvass support at the NSG. With the Bush administration arguing that the 123 agreement must be fully negotiated first, the Indian issue will most likely not figure in the nuclear cartel's 2007 plenary meeting opening in Cape Town on April 16.

Whether India likes it or not, the 123 agreement has become the only instrument with which the NSG's restrictions can be prised open, at least for the moment. And precisely for that reason, it cannot accept a bilateral agreement with the U.S. that places extraneous and arbitrary restrictions.

In the run-up to the Hyde Act, the Bush administration played the executive-legislature division in Washington to the hilt in order to shift the goalposts of the July 2005 agreement. Today, U.S. officials are pressing India to conclude the 123 negotiations quickly citing domestic political uncertainties caused by the ascendancy of the Democrats. As the U.S. slips into presidential election mode, it is said Congress' appetite to give President Bush a foreign policy boost by approving the 123 agreement will diminish. While this is true, the nuclear deal with India is so significant for the U.S. in strategic terms that partisan politics will not be allowed to scuttle it.

If the Bush administration is so worried about timing, it should ensure NSG approval first. In any case, the way the Hyde Act is worded, the NSG must change its rule for India before the 123 agreement can be submitted for congressional approval. By seeking to introduce an artificial deadline, the U.S. hopes to browbeat India into abandoning its concerns. But the Manmohan Singh government cannot afford to do that. Even without the subsequent shift in goalposts, the nuclear deal was politically contentious. If there is no "full" cooperation at the end of the negotiating tunnel and if the U.S. succeeds in converting India's voluntary test moratorium into an involuntary one — that too at a time when its Deputy Secretary for Energy, Clay Sell, reiterated only last week America's "right" to conduct nuclear tests in the future — the political fallout will be substantial.

More on Rademaker, India and Iran

Abbas Edalat of the Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran interviewed me last week on my story about a former senior Bush administration offcial's admission that India's anti-Iran votes at the IAEA had been "coerced" by the U.S. You can read the full text at the CASMII website or here.





Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

US Coercion of India against Iran at IAEA

Siddharth Varadarajan interviewed by Abbas Edalat (source: CASMII )
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Editor's note: In two crucial votes at the Governors' Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in 2005 and 2006, India voted against Iran. The first time to condemn Iran for not meeting its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the second time to report Iran's file to the UN Security Council. Siddharth Varadarajan, the Associate Editor of The Hindu recently attended a talk in New Delhi in which Stephen Rademaker, the former US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation, confessed that the US coerced India to vote against Iran in these two crucial cases. Abbas Edalat, CASMII's founder, spoke to Siddharth Varadarajan.

Abbas Edalat: Can you explain what Stephen Rademaker actually said in the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) meeting on Thursday 15th February 2007 about the US using coercion on India to vote against Iran in the Governors' Board of the IAEA? Did he use slides for his talk?

Siddharth Varadarajan: Mr. Stephen Rademaker was invited to speak at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, the premier Indian strategic affairs think-tank, which receives the bulk of its budget from the Indian Ministry of Defence. The meeting was on February 15, and the invitation was sent by email only on February 14 to all IDSA members as well as to journalists writing on strategic affairs. I am both a member of the IDSA and a journalist, so I can’t say in what capacity I was invited! Incidentally, an IDSA official told me off the record later that it was the U.S. embassy in Delhi which had approached the Institute and requested it to organise Mr. Rademaker's lecture.

The invitation from IDSA Director Mr Narendra Sisodia noted that Mr. Rademaker, a "former Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation, will be visiting Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and speaking on "North Korea, Iran and the Emerging Nuclear Order" … He will also be in a position to respond to questions regarding Indo-US Nuclear Deal."

Mr. Sisodia enclosed Mr. Rademaker's resume as well. In his introductory remarks, the IDSA director noted Mr. Rademaker’s previous official affiliations and said he had left the US government at the end of December 2006 to join Barbour, Griffith and Rogers.

Mr. Rademaker began his talk -- which was ostensibly about North Korea and Iran -- with general observations about how India no longer regarded non-proliferation as a dirty word. He cited his own experience in high-level discussions with the Indians and mentioned the July 2005 US-India nuclear deal as a watershed which helped bring about a major shift in Indian attitudes. One example of the change of mindset was India's willingness to adopt tough export-control laws. But, he added: "The best illustration of this is the two votes India cast against Iran at the IAEA. I am the first person to admit that the votes were coerced".

Mr. Rademaker noted that the Congressional hearings on the nuclear deal -- in which a number of Senators and Congressmen had warned India to cooperate with the U.S. on Iran -- had played a decisive role in this regard.

As for your question on whether he showed slides, Mr. Rademaker spoke from his own notes but there was no visual presentation.

AE: Exactly who was present at this meeting? Can you name any IDSA staff
who were present there? Did any one take notes apart from yourself?

SV: The Director of IDSA, Mr. Narendra Sisodia was present and chaired the meeting. In all, there were about 20 persons, most of whom were IDSA researchers or members. I am not sure who else took notes but I am sure many did because what Mr. Rademaker said prompted lively and at times heated discussion.

AE: What do you think was Rademaker's motivation in being so boastful
about coercion of India by the US?

SV: Well, he was really stating the obvious, and doing so at a time when he believed the Indian debate had moved on. But there was another reason -- he was trying to tell the Indian audience that the U.S. would make further demands on India. For example, he openly said the US wanted India to join its unilateral sanctions against Iran in the likely event that Russia and China did not back tough UN sanctions. India should abandon its proposed gas pipeline from Iran, he said. India should do all these things if it wanted to be part of the "First World". There was no doubt that he was holding out a threat, from his vantage point as a former senior official of the Bush administration AND (and this is the irony) as a paid lobbyist of the Indian government. His firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, has been retained by the Government of India.

AE: How would it be possible to further substantiate that Rademaker
actually made this confession, apart from your own testimony?

SV: The IDSA does not wish to be drawn into a controversy because of its demi-official status. So no one from there will speak publicly. privately, however, many of its members and researchers have not only confirmed to me the accuracy of the remarks I quoted Mr. Rademaker as making but also communicated their gratitude at my decision to report the event in the Hindu.

Secondly, I think it is significant that Mr. Rademaker himself, the man at the centre of the controversy, has neither accused me nor the Hindu of misquoting him.

AE: What position did Rademaker have as a US official at the time of the
two crucial votes by India against Iran in the IAEA board? Was he
involved in the US-India negotiations for a nuclear cooperation deal?

SV: His official resume is quite clear: "In 2002, Mr. Rademaker was confirmed by the Senate as an Assistant Secretary of State, and from then until 2006 he headed at various times three bureaus of the Department of State, including the Bureau of Arms Control and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. He directed nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North Korea, as well as the Proliferation Security Initiative. He also led semiannual strategic dialogues with Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, and headed U.S. delegations to numerous international conferences, including the 7th Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2005."

He may not have been part of the inner circle of US officials who negotiated the July 2005 US-India deal but he had led many US delegations in strategic dialogues with India, including discussions on nuclear and proliferation issues.

In fact, he was in Delhi in June 2005 for official talks on proliferation issues and made a public comment even then that India would make a mistake if it went ahead with the Iran gas pipeline. The Economic Times of June 18, 2005 quoted him as saying: “We think it [the pipeline] would be a mistake. It would provide oil revenue to Iran that could be the basis of funding for weapons of mass destruction,’’

As the State Department's point person for arms control in 2005-2006, Rademaker was fully in the inter-agency loop in the Beltway evolving strategies to deal with Iran, one of which was to do what it takes to ensure India sides with the US in the crucial September 2005 IAEA Board of Governors meeting. If someone like Rademaker is willing to acknowledge that India's votes there were "coerced", there can be no doubt that this is an accurate reflection of the perception within the Bush administration in those days.

AE: Why is the nuclear deal with the US so important for the Government
of India to allow itself to be coerced by the US to vote against Iran?

This is one of those strategic blunders which undercuts the Government of India's claims to Great Power status for India. A country of India's size should have had the diplomatic elan to open a way for nuclear commerce with the US while at the same time standing up for a rational and dialogue-based approach to the Iran nuclear issue. The two should not be mutually exclusive. India has a right to nuclear energy. And it has a right to have mutually beneficial relations with Iran, a country with which it shares deep cultural, civilisational and strategic interests. In energy terms, nuclear energy -- even if the promised cooperation materialises -- can only be an answer to India's requirements in the long-term. For the short and medium term, India's growth prospects depend more crucially on access to hydrocarbons from a mixed basket of sources, including Iran. Why India should go along and facilitate Washington's drive to confrontation against that country is an abiding mystery.

AE: The fact that the US tried to coerce India to vote against Iran in
the IAEA's board is of course well established. In fact, as you know,
David C. Mulford the US Ambassador to India is on the record, as
reported by the BBC on 26th January 2006 for example, to have warned India that there would be no US-India nuclear deal if India did not vote against Iran
at the IAEA board. He was indeed summoned for this remark by the
Government of India and reprimanded. So what is so significant about
Stephen Rademaker's confession? Why is it any more embarrassing for
India and the US compared to the original public remarks by the US
Ambassador last year?

SV: Well, Rademaker is also our lobbyist now. So people in government are asking, if a guy who's supposed to be working for us speaks like this, what must the guys who are working against us be saying? That is why the Indian government didn’t know how to react to what The Hindu reported. Their knee-jerk response was to get Ambassador Mulford to disown the remarks and even disown Rademaker. But Mulford's denial convinced no one. They then got Robert Blackwill, the former US Ambassador to India, to tell the Times of India in an "exclusive interview" that the US respects India's independence, and that there is no way any one could believe India could be coerced, and that Rademaker had been misquoted. Yeah, right! But again, no one believes these guys.

Last week Mr. Blackwill came to Delhi and CNBC's Karan Thapar asked me to join him in a half-hour debate on the nuclear deal and Iran. I agreed, and so did he. Apparently. But then his guys must have started doing their homework. My blog's IP tracker showed a number of hits from Barbour, Griffith and Rogers the night before the programme was to be recorded. And when I turned up at the TV studio, the anchorperson informed me that Blackwill wouldn't be coming to the programme after all as he had a "sore throat".

AE: Have any of the parties of the opposition raised the issue in any way in the parliament? If not, why not?

SV: The issue may be raised by the Opposition now that parliament is in session. The session opened last week and its time was taken up with the Budget and some other political controversies. But the Iran issue is a live one.

AE: Rademaker's confession was revealed by Hindu and Times of India but
does not seem to have been reported in any main western media. How do
you think this confession can impact on the legitimacy of the two
decisions of Governors' Board of the IAEA, first to condemn Iran for
non-compliance and then to report Iran's file to the UN Security Council?

SV: The biggest challenge to the legitimacy of the Indian vote in September 2005 was the official "Explanation of Vote" provided by the Indian ambassador to the IAEA. Remember, India voted "yes" to a resolution which found Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations and which said Iran's nuclear programme therefore gave rise to questions which were a threat to international peace and security. But the Indian ambassador began his explanation by noting: "The Indian delegation has studied the draft resolution tabled by the EU-3 yesterday. There are elements in the draft which we have difficulty with... [F]inding Iran non-compliant in the context of Article XII-C of the Agency's Statute is not justified. It would also not be accurate to characterize the current situation as a threat to international peace and security.”

Please read that statement again slowly! So why did India vote for the resolution referring the Iran file to the UN Security Council (UNSC) when it disagreed with the two main triggers? Because apparently "more time" has allegedly been given for the file to be studied at the IAEA Board before sending it on to the UNSC! The explanation made no sense. The vote made no sense, when related to the clear belief of India that Iran was not non-compliant. And yet we voted against Iran, knowing full well the US wanted to take the matter to the UNSC and thereby remove the IAEA from the driver's seat.

AE: Do you think other member states of the Governors' Board of the IAEA
were also put under pressure by the US and its European allies to vote
against Iran? If so what evidence is there for such coercion?

SV: Undoubtedly. I recently had the occasion to meet a senior delegation from a European member country of the P5+1. Privately, these officials, who deal with Iran, were skeptical about the current US approach but said their government was unable to resist Washington's pressure. If this is the case with a major European power, you can imagine the fate of "lesser" IAEA Board members.

AE: Given the US Ambassador's public threats against the Government of
India in January 2006, one would have expected Dr Elbradei, the Director
General of the IAEA to declare as illegitimate any vote against Iran in
the IAEA's Governors' Board on February 4th 2006. Is there not an
analogy here with a court of law in which a sentence against the accused
is obtained by coercion of witnesses or jury members?

SV: I believe the entire votes in September 2005 and February 2006 were ultra vires the IAEA Statute. There was simply no justification is sending Iran’s case to the UNSC. The bigger problem is that the issue has become so politicised that the IAEA Secretariat itself is unable to function under objective criteria. I mean, the IAEA inspectors are expected to certify that Iran has no undeclared nuclear activity. Give the current climate of politically manipulated hysteria, no IAEA inspector, with the best of intentions, will find it easy to issue such a certificate even ifn Iran were to give 200 per cent cooperation. This is the crux of the matter. Like in Iraq, Iran and the IAEA have been tasked with proving a negative.

AE: When the Western leaders accuse Iran of concealing its nuclear
programme for 18 years, they never make any mention of the systematic US
efforts after the Iranian revolution of 1979 to prevent western and
non-western governments and companies, in violation of the Article IV of
the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to collaborate with Iran in developing its
civilian nuclear technology. Has the Governors' Board of the IAEA ever
looked into these US violations when discussing Iran's file?

SV: I wrote about the issue of the US denying Iran its rights under the NPT going back to the 1980s in The Hindu on 22 August 2006.

Since the IAEA Statute commits the agency to provide technical assistance to member states, a team of experts travelled to Iran to interact with scientists at ENTEC the Iranian atomic establishment set up in 1974 with French assistance to work on the fuel cycle. According to an account provided by Mark Hibbs in Nuclear Fuel, one of the most authoritative newsletters of the international nuclear industry, the IAEA experts recommended that the agency assist ENTEC to help their scientists overcome their lack of practical experience. They also suggested that the IAEA provide expert services in a number of areas including the fuel cycle.

But the promised IAEA help never materialised. According to Mr. Hibbs: "Sources said that when in 1983 the recommendations of an IAEA mission to Iran were passed on to the IAEA's technical cooperation program, the U.S. government then `directly intervened' to discourage the IAEA from assisting Iran in production of UO2 and UF6. `We stopped that in its tracks,' said a former U.S. official." Rebuffed by the IAEA, Iran signed an agreement with Argentina, only to have Washington force Buenos Aires to back off in 1992. Five years later, the Clinton administration got China to abandon its official assistance to Iran on the fuel cycle.

AE: What is the consequence of such US abuse of the IAEA for the future
of the IAEA and the NPT?

SV: I believe the US strategy is to so frustrate Iran that the Iranian leadership is trapped into denouncing the IAEA and NPT and walking out of both. Needless to say, the US approach is making more likely, rather than less, the prospects of further nuclear breakout. Proliferation risks must be dealt with through a combination of technical, legal and political fixes. All countries, whether in the NPT or outside it, have the right to pursue a fuel cycle. NPT states must guarantee the cycle is peaceful and IAEA inspections verify the same. The US wants to abrogate that right. Iran is a test case. But there will be others too in the years to come.

AE: How should journalists, peace activists and antiwar lawmakers in
western countries use Rademaker's confession to oppose the US in using
the UN Security Council to obtain a veneer of legitimacy for its war
drive against Iran?

SV: They should publicise his remarks as widely as possible. The U.S. is pulling out all the stops in its drive to confront Iran. The world must prevent at all costs the possibility of another illegal and disastrous war.

---------------------------------------------

Siddharth Varadarajan is Associate Editor of The Hindu, India's most respected and authoritative English-language newspaper. His writings on the Iran nuclear issue won the Elizabeth Neuffer memorial silver medal for excellence in reporting in 2005, a prestigious award handed out by the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York. His personal website is http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/ and he can be reached at svaradarajan@gmail.com

Transitional justice in Southasia @ Kathmandu

The concept of transitional justice is familiar to people in South Africa, Chile and other countries but how relevant and useful is it for South Asia? This is a question that formed the basis for a fascinating two day seminar in Kathmandu in January organised by Himal Southasian and the Center for Transitional Justice. While South Asia has witnessed several large-scale mass crimes against civilians -- Nellie 1983, Delhi 1984, Gujarat 2002, the violence in Kashmir, the Colombo massacre of Tamils in 1983, the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971 by the Pakistani army -- is it analytically useful to speak of 'transitional justice'? And how useful is it to adopt a pan-South Asian approach? These were the questions I was asked to address in the opening session. The researchers at Himal have transcribed most of the proceedings and uploaded extracts from the first set of presentations in their March edition.

March 2007
Himal SouthAsian

Special report
Exhuming AccountabilityConference on transitional justice in Southasia
23-25 January, Kathmandu Hosted by Himal Southasian and the International Center for Transitional Justice

The pan-regional problem
Siddharth Varadarajan

Why are we speaking of Southasia? Is there any value in clubbing the experiences and practices of the entire Subcontinent into one meeting? There are valid reasons, primarily because of the pan-Subcontinental institutionalisation of certain state practices as well as of certain practices of those who purport to be resistance. In India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, systematic violation of international humanitarian law by both state and non-state actors in conflict situations is something which is very much present as a common theme.

The second commonality is the presence of, for want of a better term, ethnic or demographic cleansing. Virtually all of our counties have had episodes in the past in which large movements of people have been forced by either the state or non-state actors. Distinct from a process of demographic shifting have been anti-minority massacres. We’ve had specific instances of high levels of targeted violence, most often with state complicity against minorities – the bomb blasts and pressure on the Shia in Pakistan, the low-intensity violence against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh.

The fourth commonality in the context of conflict is systematic violence against women. The fifth commonality which I see in the architecture of insurgency and counterinsurgency is the problem of disappearances, which we have in J & K, the Northeast, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan. The last point of commonality is that of impunity. Impunity is enshrined not only in the judicial or political practices in Southasia, but also in our national laws. When you have a situation wherein officers cannot be prosecuted for doing things in the line of duty, when you have impunity enshrined in law, you have once again a good reason to take up the issue of transitional justice at a pan-Southasian level.

The second question that I think is worth asking, particularly given the linkages of the transitional-justice phenomenon to the international criminal architecture, is: Which is the best forum in which to seek justice – international, national or regional? I think that even though the emergence of the International Criminal Court and other forums becomes an additional point of pressure, justice that comes through a national forum is likely to be more durable, more transformative.

This brings me to the third question. Can there be transitional justice without transition? Because if you look at the examples of what is classified as transitional justice today – the cases of South Africa, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, and Peru to a certain extent – virtually all of these mechanisms arose out of the context of a political transformation. We must not lose sight of the fact that it is the transition that is the key to the realisation of justice in many respects.

Can the struggle for justice help us bring about political transition? Can we think of justice as transformative justice in the political sense? I think we can. It’s significant that in the past decade the ability of ruling establishments across Southasia to get away with the kind of crimes they’ve got away with in the past has decreased, the political cost has definitely gone up.

Compare the political fallout for the BJP as a result of the Gujarat massacres of 2002 with the political fallout for the Congress party as a result of the anti-Sikh massacres of 1984. There is a world of difference in the nature of public opinion, in the manner in which the media covered the incidents, in the archiving and documentation and the willingness to collate and bring this information into the public domain. All of these suggest that, in a sense, the preoccupation and struggle for justice does provide an impetus for us to bring out a reconfiguration of power equations in society.

Transitional justice cannot just be about addressing past crimes, or even about preventing future ones. It also has to help all of us in our own different regions put a closure on historically-evolved grievances. Unless the historically-evolved grievance of, say, the people of Kashmir is not addressed, unless their sacrifices are not respected, unless homage is not paid to all the people who were victim to the violence, it will be very difficult for people living in these societies and communities to feel a sense of closure.

Finally, while many of the issues that we raise concern questions that are beyond our domain, what we do control is the process of archiving, documentation, dissemination of information. These are significant efforts, which help to challenge the official silence or the widespread public apathy which comes about due to lack of information or ignorance; I think that this is something that we can do as individuals and as a collective.