M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Contrary to the
expectations of Congress Party boss Sonia Gandhi and Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, last week's special meeting in Vienna of the 45-member Nuclear
Suppliers Group ended in deadlock. The meeting had been requested by the United
States to approve George W. Bush's quest for a "clean waiver" for the
resumption of nuclear trade with India – commerce that had been frozen since
India's 1974 nuclear test.
Tellingly, all but one of the countries
opposing India were either European, or of largely European stock. The one
exception was Japan, a country that prides itself on its people being the
"Westerners of the East."
Expectedly, Austria led the Euro-attack
against the proposed exemption, reiterating the bloc’s 34-year demand that
India be forced to accept full-scope safeguards on all its nuclear facilities,
as well as sign on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty. New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland, Switzerland and Ireland
joined hands with Japan in backing the Austrian stand, even though each had
been individually made aware by Indian negotiators that any such conditions
would result in India walking away from the deal.
Unfortunately for backers of the deal,
reports reaching New Delhi suggest that the Bush point person for the talks,
Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation
John Rood, proved to be less than enthusiastic about securing a clean waiver
for India. In this, Rood is following in the path of his predecessor Robert
Joseph, who had also been unenthusiastic about the deal. Both are members of
the U.S. nonproliferation mainstream that for decades has focused on India – a
state that has never proliferated its technology beyond its own borders – while
doing little about U.S. policies that have winked at proliferation by Pakistan,
China and North Korea.
