Democrat pushes for India nuke conditions

By Foster Klug

Associated Press

August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration risks the collapse of a U.S.-Indian civil nuclear deal if it fails to push an international nuclear group to accept conditions that would punish India for testing atomic weapons, a Democratic lawmaker says.

The accord would reverse three decades of U.S. policy by shipping atomic fuel and technology to India in return for international inspections on India's civilian, but not its military, reactors. But time is running out for a top foreign policy initiative of President Bush, who leaves office in January.

Concerns about the deal were raised by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that was made public Wednesday. Berman supports nuclear cooperation with India.

Last week, the measure cleared a key hurdle when the International Atomic Energy Agency approved a safeguards agreement that would allow U.N. monitors access to 14 existing or planned Indian nuclear reactors by 2014.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries that export nuclear material must still approve an exemption to its rules for India, which has not signed international nonproliferation accords but has tested nuclear weapons. The deal must then be ratified by the U.S. Congress.

The NSG could take up the deal in late August. But Congress is now on a monthlong break, and it returns for only a few weeks of work in September before it is scheduled to break for the rest of the year to campaign for November elections that will determine the next president and the political future of many current lawmakers.

Berman wrote Rice that he found it "incomprehensible that the administration apparently intends to seek or accept an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines for India with few or none of the conditions" in a 2006 U.S. law provisionally approving nuclear cooperation with India.

"Such an exemption," Berman said, "would be inconsistent with U.S. law, place American firms at a severe competitive disadvantage and undermine critical U.S. nonproliferation objectives. It would also jeopardize congressional support for nuclear cooperation with India, this year and in the future."

Berman wants Bush to reject any NSG proposal that does not:

--Immediately stop NSG member countries from conducting nuclear trade if India explodes a nuclear device;

--Prohibit the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology to India;

--Include a stipulation that prevents countries from letting India reprocess nuclear fuel in a facility outside permanent safeguards.

Failure to secure approval under Bush would leave the accord to an uncertain fate. Both leading candidates for president, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, have indicated support for the deal. But it is not clear that either would consider it a priority as president.

Supporters say nuclear cooperation with India would provide crucial energy to a democratic, economically vibrant country. Critics say the deal would ruin global efforts to stop the spread of atomic weapons and boost India's nuclear arsenal.