Round The World

New Delhi, 4 December 2007

The Inside Story

UPA SNUBS RUSSIA

By M D Nalapat

(Holds UNESCO Peace Chair, Prof, Geopolitics, Manipal Acad of

Higher Ed., Ex-Resident Editor, Times of India, Delhi)

Diplomatic clusters in New Delhi were taken by surprise when the Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, announced (a few hours before the PM's Special Flight landed in Moscow) that there would be no agreement signed on the supply of four additional nuclear reactors to Koodankulam to augment the two already functional during this visit.

The Putin Administration had already been informally told of this decision four days prior to Manmohan Singh's departure by sources within the UPA. But it refused to believe that the UPA Government would administer a senseless and substantial snub as rejecting an offer of four additional nuclear reactors from the only member of the UN Security Council Big Five active in the nuclear trade with India.

The scepticism was multiplied by the fact that the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, had explicitly requested supply of the four reactors during her talks with President Putin on her sentimental journey to Russia two years ago. A request that had been endorsed subsequently by her Man Friday, Manmohan Singh.

Also, unlike the Singh-Bush deal, to which had been attached the albatross of the Hyde Act, the Koodankulam agreement was "without preconditions." Thus, further giving the lie to leaks that it was somehow tied to the ongoing discussions with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).  

Some months ago, presumably under pressure from the Bush Administration, France had walked away from the understanding that there would be a nuclear deal with India. Sources in Washington asserted that the Bush team is seeking to prevent any other country from entering into a nuclear collaboration agreement with India, until Manmohan Singh succeeds in his mission of operationalising the India-US nuclear deal of July 18, 2005. 

Denying India any option other than the US, is seen by experts as a pressure tactic by the Bush Administration to force the critics of the deal to moderate their opposition enough to allow the deal to go forward, by making it clear that New Delhi had no option other than accepting the Bush offer.

Unlike Paris, which was quick to toe the line of the US, especially now that Nicholas Sarkozy has been elected the country’s Head of State, Moscow refused to succumb, and stood by its decision conveyed three years ago, by the Putin Administration, that Russia was prepared to enter into a comprehensive nuclear cooperation agreement with India.

Interestingly, a similar suggestion was also explicitly mentioned during the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao's visit a couple of years ago. It is therefore incorrect to assert, as the Manmohan Singh team has repeatedly been doing, that until the India-US nuclear deal gets signed, no other nuclear-related collaboration is possible. Moscow certainly, and perhaps also Beijing, has the capability to chart a course independent of the US, unlike France and the UK

What has confounded the Putin Administration is the fact that the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission, Nikolai Spassky, accompanied by several aides, had spent an entire week in discussions with senior Atomic Energy Commission personnel led by the Chairman Anil Kakodkar, just a week prior to Manmohan Singh's departure for Moscow.

The two sides had worked on the proposed supply of the four additional reactors to Koodankulam, and had ironed out all the remaining problem areas. Apart from being vetted and cleared by the Atomic Energy Commissions’ on sides, as many as 13 other Russian Ministries as well as four Indian Ministries had examined and cleared the proposal. Even the Russian and Indian texts had been juxtaposed to each other and matched. All that was remaining was the signature.

Small wonder that Moscow refused to take seriously information from New Delhi that Manmohan Singh was going to back out of the deal. Indeed, the Koodankulam commitment was to have been the high point of the PM's 28-hour visit to Moscow, the other agreements being of much less importance, certainly not warranting a Prime Ministerial visit

Spin masters in Manmohan Singh’s team have been passing the word to a credulous media that without the US deal going through, including agreements with the NSG and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "it would not be possible for Russia to supply uranium fuel for the new reactors".

According to individuals within the Atomic Energy Commission, this statement is false. The agreement sought to be entered into was explicitly a continuation of the earlier one on Koodankulam, and therefore there would be no bar on the supply of fuel to the four new reactors.

Moreover, Russian experts view with amusement the excuse that the fuel supply would have been a casualty of India not first entering into a comprehensive agreement with the NSG and the IAEA. They pointed out that Moscow had only recently supplied two planeloads of nuclear fuel to Tarapur "without any agreement”.

Besides, they were emphatic that the Putin Administration would ensure the supply of fuel for the four additional reactors specified in the aborted India-Russia Agreement. They irritatedly stressed that "unlike India, we in Moscow do not jump to the commands of Washington".

Clearly, the going back on the Koodankulam agreement has created a widespread perception in diplomatic clusters that India has in effect become a client state of the US, the way Pakistan has been since 1951. Experts within India assert that a Koodankulam deal would have upped the pressure on the NSG and the IAEA to agree to more favourable conditions for India, in place of the severe restrictions mandated by the 2006 Hyde Act.

Incidentally, because of the low priority given to nuclear energy in the US, the earliest a US-built reactor could become operational in India is placed at 2016 by experts within the atomic energy establishment. Whereas the proposed four extra units of Koodankulam would have begun generating power sometime in 2010, given international standards of efficiency in construction, and 2012, using the best standards available in India's public sector

Had the UPA been serious about augmenting India's energy supply, it would have fast-tracked and not stalled the Russian offer of four additional reactors. It would have opened up the nuclear power sector to India's capable private sector. And it would have worked on signing (a more balanced than the 123) nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia.

However, this would have annoyed the US corporations such as Bechtel, who have close links to the US Vice-President Dick Cheney. Thus, this was a course that Manmohan Singh chose not to take, even at the risk of angering an old friend, Russia, and conveying an impression to the international community that after the fall of Tony Blair, the next White House poodle is the occupant of 7 Racecourse Road, New Delhi. ---- INFA

(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)