The Bush administration succeeded Sept. 6 in its three-year campaign to secure a waiver for India from long-standing international nuclear trade restrictions. Three days of U.S. prodding and an Indian reiteration of its current nuclear testing moratorium pledge helped the United States overcome the last resistance of some nuclear suppliers to the sweeping policy reversal. With international trade restrictions on India removed, the U.S. Congress heeded Bush administration exhortations to bypass existing U.S. law to approve a bilateral U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement on an expedited basis. (Continue)
After a difficult three-year long process, the Senate this evening joined the House of Representatives in approving an unprecedented and imprudent nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India. The vote was 86-13. Earlier today, the Senate engaged in a brief but useful floor debate on the resolution of approval for the U.S.-Indian Agreement for Nuclear Cooperation and a common sense amendment offered Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) that would have: (Continue)
In a letter sent to all 535 members of Congress, a group of independent nonproliferation experts, former U.S. ambassadors, faith groups, and international security and disarmament organizations urged the rejection of an unprecedented agreement for nuclear cooperation sent Sept. 10 to the Hill. (Continue)
Early this week, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published articles in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice extolled the Bush administration’s record in limiting global nuclear dangers. Those articles apparently stemmed from an extended response that Rice delivered to a reporter’s question at a Sept. 7 press conference in Rabat, Morocco. Rice asserted that the administration’s record on nonproliferation and counterproliferation was “very strong” and “left this situation…in far better shape than we found it.” In making her case, Rice claimed success on a raft of issues, including progress on nuclear affairs with India, Iran, and North Korea. (Continue)
On September 9, 2008 Daryl Kimball appeared on C-Span's Washington Journal to debate the U.S.-India nuclear deal with Karl Inderfurth. Kimball argued that the deal would weaken the global non-proliferation regime.
In an unprecedented move that will undermine the value of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the already beleaguered nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the NSG reluctantly agreed today in Vienna to exempt NPT hold-out India from its guidelines that require comprehensive international safeguards as a condition of nuclear trade. (Continue)
As U.S. and Indian officials race against the clock to win domestic and international approval for a controversial proposal to relax rules governing nuclear trade with India, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (HCFA) has made public the Department of State’s January 2008 responses to more than 40 questions sent by the committee in October 2007 that were aimed at sorting out ambiguous and contradictory statements about the August 2007 U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement. (Continue)
Today, the Arms Control Association (ACA) obtained a copy of the revised U.S. proposal to exempt India from existing nuclear trade restrictions maintained by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The proposed rule change would allow India to acquire nuclear technology and material previously off limits to it because of India’s misuse of past nuclear imports designated for peaceful purposes to conduct a nuclear explosion in 1974 and refusal to allow full-scope international safeguards on its nuclear complex. (Continue)
Decision time has arrived on the controversial proposal to roll back three decades of nuclear trade restrictions on India, which violated peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements by detonating its first nuclear bomb in 1974.
As early as Sept. 4-5, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will reconvene to consider a revised U.S. proposal to permit nuclear trade with India. At a special meeting of the 45-member group last month, the Bush administration proposed an India-specific exemption from NSG guidelines, which currently require full-scope IAEA safeguards as a condition of supply. Bowing to Indian demands, the Bush team called for a “clean” and “unconditional” waiver that would have allowed unrestricted nuclear trade with India at the discretion of each NSG member state. (Continue)