A day after Left parties formally withdrew support, the government released the draft text of the India-specific safeguards agreement with IAEA, which fully supports India’s plans to separate its civilian and military reactors and observes the sovereign rights of India.The agreement, which basically accepts that India will continue to develop its military programme and accepts India as “a state with advanced nuclear technology”, said that the safeguards will only apply to civilian nuclear facilities that are ``solely’’ identified by India.
This basically fulfils the government’s assurances that India’s strategic nuclear programme will remain untouched by the safeguards agreement. At the same time, the text clarifies that India should not use any items produced in the safeguarded facilities and material received for them in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other military purposes.
While the agreement has been cleverly crafted to incorporate the other assurances given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Parliament on fuel supply guarantees and corrective measures, it remains `vague’ on how this will actually be achieved.
In the preamble of the safeguards agreement, the IAEA draft notes that India has accepted the safeguards agreement on the grounds that it will conclude international cooperation arrangements for uninterrupted fuel supply.
“An essential basis of India’s concurrence to accept agency safeguards under an India-specific safeguards agreement is the conclusion of international cooperation arrangements creating the necessary conditions for India to obtain access to the international fuel market, including reliable, uninterrupted and continuous access to fuel supplies from companies in several nations,” the draft text says.
It further says that India”may take corrective measures’’ to run its nuclear reactors in the event of a disruption of fuel supplies. However, the agreement remains ambiguous on how both these aims will be achieved. There is only one reference to fuel supply guarantees and corrective measures in the text.
``Indeed, the only reference to fuel supply occurs in the preamble, in the form of a note by India. There is, however, no reference in the body of the text to `fuel supply’ or to a `strategic reserve of nuclear fuel’. The ornamental reference in the preamble was inserted to save face because its language makes explicit that India is not tying the IAEA to assured fuel supply,’’ said expert Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
The wording and placement of the paragraphs in the preamble has also invited criticism from two nuclear scientists who say that there is nothing India-specific about the agreement.
``The way this was going to be India specific was through fuel supply guarantees and corrective measures. This kind of vague statement just opens it out to dispute,’’ said former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairman A Gopalakrishnan.
The agreement, he said, is based on the IAEA Information Circular 66 which is for non-weapon states.
Former Atomic Energy Commission chairman P K Iyengar pointed out that anyway the IAEA is not the body for getting assurances of fuel supply.
``If India gives a list of facilities, they will say in what method they will police it. The agreement is in great detail on inspections, design features and reports. This is a much more intrusive document,’’ he said. Mr Iyengar opined that India will not only have to open up its reactors for inspection but it will also have to pay for the costs. The accord lays out the cost of inspection of each Indian facility at e1.2 million annually and India had agreed to place 16 reactors under safeguards in a phased manner.
“India and the Agency shall each bear any expense incurred in the implementation of their responsibilities under this agreement,” one of the clauses said.
Source : The Economic Times
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