New York Times
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 

U.S. Allies and Congress 'Positive' About India Nuclear Deal 

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN 

WASHINGTON, July 19 - A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that the administration had gotten a "fairly positive" response among its allies overseas and Congressional leaders for a new agreement to give India help for its civilian nuclear program while allowing it to retain nuclear weapons. 

The official, R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said that European leaders had been told in recent weeks that a deal might be in the works, but that it had not been clear there would be an agreement until the last minute, leaving little time to brief foreign and Congressional officials in advance. 

"I don't expect a lot of opposition in Europe," Mr. Burns said in an interview, adding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also spoke Tuesday to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and that his reaction was "constructive" and "not overly problematic." 

A spokesman at the Pakistani Embassy said there had been no reaction in Islamabad to the deal announced Monday, between President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. 

The accord would bring a major change in the international accords governing nuclear technology, essentially exempting India from longstanding requirements that only countries willing to forswear nuclear weapons may purchase or obtain civilian nuclear technology, equipment and fuel from the world's major nuclear energy suppliers. India has never signed the Nonproliferation Treaty and never accepted inspections of its nuclear facilities. Now it is to accept inspections of its civilian but not its military nuclear facilities. For the agreement to be put into effect, Congress would have to change a 1978 law barring American nuclear energy aid to nuclear weapons states, as well an accord of a coalition of nations known as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which has long agreed to similar restrictions.

A European diplomat said that although the deal was a "step in the right direction" for India, because India would agree to safeguards for its civilian nuclear program, it posed the risk of weakening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "if it is poorly implemented." 

"India has to implement what it committed itself to, and perhaps go even further," said the diplomat, asking not to be identified because European governments were still formulating their official positions. 

The deal between India and the United States drew criticism from nuclear experts at research institutions specializing in efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and from a former top Bush administration official involved in the issue.

"It's disappointing that we've given something to India and not gotten something substantial in return," said John S. Wolf, a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation affairs. "This agreement is difficult to reconcile with the international norms advanced by the United States for the last 40 years." 

Mr. Wolf, who is now president of the Eisenhower Fellowship program in Philadelphia, said experts on the issue at the State Department in the last term had resisted efforts to make a deal with India along the lines of the one announced Monday. 

Among those experts, he said, were John R. Bolton, the former under secretary of state for international security and arms control, who has been nominated by President Bush to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton's office did not respond to a request for him to comment. 

Various administration officials say that a core of officials had wanted to help India from the start of Mr. Bush's time in office in 2001. 

Among the advocates of concessions to India, those officials said, were Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Robert Blackwill, a former ambassador to India who served on the National Security Council staff. Mr. Blackwill, in the current issue of The National Interest, a public policy magazine, says he frequently battled with the State Department on nuclear issues, describing opponents of giving India wider latitude in the nuclear area as "nagging nannies" whose policies he refused to put into effect. He did not return a call asking for comment. 

Mr. Burns, who has been a point man in the India negotiations, said Secretary Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, had hammered out the final details on Monday morning. He said exempting India from the nonproliferation norms should not create problems for the administration's other efforts to try to get Iran and North Korea to adhere to Nonproliferation Treaty obligations. Both countries, he said, had signed the treaty, but then cheated. North Korea later withdrew from it. 

"Everybody knows, when you stop to think about it, that India is unique," he said. "India has also told the truth about what it's doing and is now willing to subject itself to intrusive inspections. Iran and North Korea signed the NPT and then did not abide by the rules. India wants to abide by the rules." 

Mr. Wolf said that despite his own misgivings, he expected that the United States' allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, would probably support the India deal because they would jump at the chance to sell nuclear components to India. 

"Whatever they're saying now about this agreement," he said, "they'll be in New Delhi tomorrow."