Outside View: India's nonproliferation
UPI, March 17, 2006

By KAUSHIK KAPISTHALAM
UPI Outside View Commentator

WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- As Congress mulls legislation allowing civilian nuclear commerce with India, some in the American nonproliferation circles are raising questions about India's nonproliferation track record. One such effort is a study by David Albright and Susan Basu of the Institute of Science and International Studies. Albright is a former U.N. weapons inspector and a reputed nonproliferation expert 

The ISIS study faults India's nonproliferation record on three counts: a) Unsafeguarded Indian facilities procure nuclear equipment and material under false pretexts, b) India's procurement system could enable others to gather dangerous nuclear secrets and c) Indian export controls are weak and proliferant states could target Indian firms to buy nuclear components. 

These findings are serious. However, scrutiny will reveal that ISIS' conclusions are without merit. 

First, the ISIS study hones in on a gas centrifuge based Uranium enrichment facility called Rare Materials Project owned by India's Department of Atomic Energy and says that India has been secretive about this facility. Indian newspapers have frequently carried press releases praising DAE scientists' achievements connected to the RMP. 

The finding that RMP and other Indian facilities are procuring nuclear components clandestinely also fails to withstand scrutiny. In fact, the authors themselves contradict this conclusion when they note that the RMP has been buying components under a process known as "tendering" or inviting bids from vendors through newspaper advertisements. If a firm is sourcing its supply through an open bidding process, then how can it be accused of secret procurement at the same time? 

Another interesting point: If Albright can figure out which Indian nuclear plant is buying which component from his office in Washington, then why cannot the supplier firms of these allegedly dangerous nuclear components do the same? A more plausible explanation is that any opaqueness in RMP's procurement process is due to India's rampant red tape and not because of any clandestine process designed to circumvent another nation's export control laws. 

The claim that RMP's tendering process reveals too much secret information is also a stretch. Any nuclear system, such as a rotor-centrifuge assembly to enrich Uranium, is immensely complex. The ISIS report merely gave examples of RMP related advertisement for a few of small subsystems such as measuring devices and vacuum pumps. To claim that someone can observe randomly occurring advertisements in Indian newspapers and figure out how to make a centrifuge assembly is simply not credible. In any case, there is little need for proliferators to exert themselves to this extent reading Indian newspapers when they can purchase turnkey enrichment systems and atomic warhead designs from India's neighbors. 

In terms of export controls, the ISIS report's findings are an exaggeration. Albright has been quoted elsewhere comparing India's ability to enforce export controls unfavorably with Germany's, for instance. The Germany comparison is quite ironic, because Albright himself had exposed serial proliferation by German firms that contributed heavily to Iraq's nuclear weapon program in the 1980s. Germans have also been embarrassed by the ease with which Pakistan's nuclear fall guy A.Q.Khan was able to buy sensitive nuclear technology and pass it on to his customers. 

Unlike Germany or several of its neighbors with "advanced" export controls, India has seen few firms leaking sensitive technology to bad players. In one such rare instance, a few years ago, U.S. intelligence tipped the Indian government off that a private Indian company, NEC Engineering, was selling missile fuel material to Iraq. Indian authorities acted promptly and arrested several NEC executives, raided its facilities and seized NEC's inventory. Even as the case was undergoing trial, NEC's export license was cancelled. In contrast, under U.S. law, while a company is being investigated for export violations, it is permitted to continue its export and import activities until the trial is complete. 

In 2005, India put the NEC lessons to use and passed the "Weapons of Mass Destruction and Their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Act." This law makes it a criminal offence for unauthorized individuals and entities to possess WMD. The legislation also applies to export, transfer, re-transfer, transit, and transshipment of material, equipment, or technology related to WMD and thus closes some of the loopholes in existing laws and regulations that could be exploited by non-state actors and terrorists seeking WMD and related materials. 

The ISIS report, like similar efforts by Western arms control specialists, also fails to note the context in which India has operated its export controls. It is incredible that India has been so focused on not leaking nuclear technology when the global nonproliferation system was targeting India as a "rogue" outlier state. The fact that India has done this should surely indicate that the country's strategists feel that it is in India's fundamental interests to not aid other nations' nuclear weapons efforts. 

In 1978 India rejected a Libyan offer seeking nuclear technology in return for $15 billion. In that same year, Saddam Hussein invited Raja Ramanna, the brain behind India's nuclear test of 1974, to Iraq and offered to pay him "whatever he wanted" if he helped Iraq build a bomb. Ramanna took the next flight home and never visited Iraq again. India has also spurned several similar offers from Iran seeking nuclear help in return for oil. For instance, in 1984, India contemplated a deal to supply Iran with a 10 MW test reactor. However, after discussions with the U.S. and other states, India scrapped that idea. Iran subsequently went to China and Pakistan with better luck, as we know now. 

In fulfilling its obligations under the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, in July 2005, India harmonized its list of controlled nuclear and missile technology materials with the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime respectively. The ISIS and other nonproliferation watchdogs have failed to accord due weight to these Indian moves. 

India's compliance with NSG sales guidelines is a huge win for nonproliferation because India is the only advanced nuclear nation that lies outside the NSG 

The U.S.-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement is therefore the logical next step for India's integration into the nonproliferation mainstream. This deal formalizes India's hitherto voluntary commitments and incentivizes good nuclear stewardship. While India should continue to improve its export control laws and implementation abilities, it has clearly earned the right to do so from within the nuclear tent. 
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(Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance commentator on South Asia issues. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com.)