[Marxism] ABOLITION 2000 Calls on to Reject the US-India Nuclear Agreement

[Sukla Sen <suklasenp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Media Release
27 July 2007

ABOLITION 2000 Calls on the International Community to
Reject the
US-India Nuclear Agreement

The United States and India have agreed on details of
an agreement
(referred to as a 123 agreement after the section in
the US Atomic
Energy Act) that will exempt India from long-standing
restrictions on
nuclear trade. It is believed that the leaders of the
two countries
will sign the agreement in the next few weeks.

ABOLITION 2000's US-India Working Group(1) calls on
the international
community to reject this agreement for the reasons
outlined below. In
the near future it plans to contact all members of the
Nuclear
Suppliers' Group (NSG) to urge them not to give in to
pressure from the
US and India.

No details of the agreement have been announced, but
it is expected
that key features will be the unusual arrangement for
a dedicated
reprocessing facility and U.S. fuel supply assurances
to India. Such
attempts to finesse concerns about compliance with US
law (the Atomic
Energy Act and the Hyde Act) ignore broader concerns.
By exempting
India from international rules governing trade in
nuclear technology,
the agreement threatens to undermine the nuclear
non-proliferation
order and thereby the prospects for global nuclear
disarmament.

Since its nuclear test in 1974, India has been subject
to sanctions on
trade in nuclear technology. After India and Pakistan
conducted nuclear
tests in 1998, the United Nations Security Council
responded by
condemning the tests and calling on both countries to
immediately stop
their nuclear weapon development programs (Resolution
1172). It also
encouraged all States to prevent the export of
equipment, materials or
technology that could in any way assist the nuclear
weapons programs of
India and Pakistan.

In addition to violating Security Council Resolution
1172, the
agreement also risks violating the United States' NPT
obligations.
Article I of the NPT prohibits nuclear-weapon states
from assisting
non-nuclear- weapon states in any way to acquire
nuclear weapons.
However, the US-India agreement would allow for the
transfer of
sensitive reprocessing under certain circumstances and
would free up
India's limited supply of domestic nuclear fuel, which
can directly or
indirectly help its unsafeguarded nuclear weapons
program. (Note that
India is not recognized as a nuclear weapons state
under the NPT.)

Despite developing and testing nuclear weapons outside
the framework of
the NPT, India is getting more favorable treatment
than any NPT state
with which the United States has a nuclear cooperation
agreement. This
is in part because the agreement would grant India
consent to reprocess
U.S.-origin nuclear fuel without ensuring that its
entire nuclear fuel
cycle complex is under safeguards.

One might expect that, in return for this favorable
treatment, India
would agree to take meaningful steps towards nuclear
disarmament. For
example, it could agree to stop producing fissile
materials and join
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But the agreement
offers nothing of
the sort. It represents a hasty attempt to cobble
together something
before the end of President Bush's term in office.

Note 1: ABOLITION 2000 is a network of over 2000
organizations in more
than 90 countries
world wide working for a global treaty to eliminate
nuclear weapons.
The US-India Working Group was established at
ABOLITION 2000's Annual
General Meeting held during the May 2007 NPT PrepCom
in Vienna.
ABOLITION 2000 lobbied governments at the NPT PrepCom.
Since then, the
Working Group has been lobbying members of the NSG,
all of which must
accept the US-India Agreement in order for it to
proceed. The Working
Group includes members from 7 of the 45 NSG countries,
plus members
from India. See the following web site for more
information:

http://cnic. jp/english/ topics/plutonium
/proliferation/ usindia.html

Contact:
Philip White, US-India Working Group Coordinator
81-3-3577-3800

Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
2F-B Akebonobashi Coop, 8-5 Sumiyoshi-cho,
Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo, 162-0065, Japan
Phone: +81-3-3357-3800 Fax: +81-3-3357-3801
Email: cnic@xxxxxxxxx Web: http://cnic. jp/english/


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