The US-India Working Group of the ABOLITION 2000 network¹ welcomes reports that implementation of the US-India Nuclear Agreement remains on hold for the time being. However, the governments of India and the US have not abandoned the agreement altogether and attempts to revive the process are continuing. Nevertheless it appears that the world has gained at least some breathing space to reflect on the damage that the agreement would do to the twin causes of disarmament and non-proliferation.

The US-India Nuclear Agreement exempts India from US non-proliferation laws that have banned the sale of nuclear fuel and technology to India for about three decades. These laws were created because India had used nuclear technology provided for peaceful purposes to make nuclear weapons. In addition, the Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries (NSG) was created in response to India's 1974 nuclear weapon test. For the agreement to proceed, the NSG must reach a consensus to grant India a special exemption from its nuclear trade rules. That India conducted 5 nuclear test explosions in 1998, after most of the NSG members had signed and ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, does not help its case.

The Agreement undermines the basic bargain of the nuclear non-proliferation regime - you cannot benefit from nuclear trade if you make nuclear weapons. Pakistan and Israel, who are also outside the NPT, have already asked for similar privileges to those offered to India. North Korea may echo these demands. Some countries may ask why they should stay in the NPT if they can get the same benefits by being outside it.

If in future, under changed political circumstances, the agreement is reactivated, members of the NSG, as well as member states of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), should resist attempts to make an exemption for India from the rules governing nuclear trade.

If India and other states outside the NPT are to be integrated into the international mainstream, NSG and NPT states must require that they do so on terms that promote genuine nuclear disarmament. Non-nuclear weapons states must insist that states which possess nuclear weapons, regardless of whether or not they are members of the NPT, take concrete and irreversible steps towards real nuclear disarmament. These steps should include bringing into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiating a Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty and signing a universal, non-discriminatory and enforceable nuclear weapons convention.

Despite developing nuclear weapons outside the NPT, India has always been a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament. It would be perfectly consistent with India's past pronouncements for it now to take the initiative in such a program. More so as Rajiv Gandhi, India's then Prime Minister, himself strongly pleaded for disarmament in June 1988 before the UNGA.

Whatever the motives might have been of the groups within India that stymied early implementation of the US-India Nuclear Agreement, a great setback for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation has been avoided for the time being. All states and all citizens working for these causes should seize this opportunity. If we fail to do so, in the not too distant future we may find ourselves back where we were two weeks ago.

Philip White, US-India Deal Working Group Coordinator
Steven Staples, Global Secretariat to Abolition 2000

23 October 2007

1. ABOLITION 2000 is a global network of over 2000 organizations in more than 90 countries working for a global treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. The US-India Deal Working Group was established at ABOLITION 2000's Annual General Meeting, May 2007, Vienna.

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