NEW YORK (IPS) - The U.S. decision last week to
proceed with a controversial civilian nuclear
deal with India has triggered strong negative
responses from peace activists, disarmament
experts and anti-nuclear groups.

"The development of a nuclear/strategic alliance
between the United States and India may promote
arms racing between India and Pakistan, and
(between) India and China," says John Burroughs,
executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’
Committee on Nuclear Policy.

The deal, he told IPS, also undermines prospects
for global agreements on nuclear restraint and
disarmament.

An equally negative reaction came from former UN
Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs
Jayantha Dhanapala: "It has the dangerous
potential of triggering a nuclear arms race among
India, Pakistan and China, with disastrous
consequences for Asian peace and stability and
Asia’s emerging economic boom."

But the Indian government argues that the nuclear
agreement would neither destabilise the region
nor prompt an arms race.

Nor will it trigger a “copycat deal” between
Pakistan and China, India’s national security
adviser N.K. Narayanan told reporters last week.

"This agreement was not an excuse to enhance our
strategic capabilities," he told a press briefing
in New Delhi.

Zia Mian of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs at Princeton University
says the United States sees strategic and
economic benefits in the nuclear deal with India.

"But the people of India and Pakistan will pay
the price, since the nuclear deal will fuel the
India-Pakistan nuclear arms race," he added.

The deal will allow India to increase its
capacity to make nuclear weapons materiel, and
Pakistan has already said it will do whatever it
can to keep up with India.

"This means nuclear establishments in both
countries will become more powerful, drain even
greater resources away from social development,
and increase the nuclear danger in South Asia,"
Mian told IPS.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state
who led the negotiations, denied the deal was a
clear example of political double standards by an
administration which has been trying to punish
Iran for its nuclear ambitions but gives its
blessings to India.

"This agreement sends a message to outlaw regimes
such as Iran that if you behave responsibly, you
will not be penalised," he told reporters last
week.

India — along with Pakistan and Israel — has
refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), but Iran has.

Called the “123 agreement”, last week’s nuclear
deal will help create a civil nuclear enrichment
facility in India, mostly with U.S.-made reactors
and expertise.

Still, in a major speech in February 2004, U.S.
President George W. Bush said that "enrichment
and reprocessing are not necessary for nations
seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes.“”The details of the so-called ’123 agreement’ are
still shrouded in secrecy but, on the basis of
what has been disclosed, it is clear that the
U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal is an example
of crude realpolitik trumping nuclear
nonproliferation principles in total disregard of
the NPT," Dhanapala told IPS.

He warned that it sends "a bad signal to the
overwhelming majority of NPT parties who have
faithfully abided by their treaty obligations."

Last week Burns told reporters that the deal
would not act as an incentive for other countries
to develop nuclear weapons outside the NPT.

Burroughs said that India made it clear when the
NPT was negotiated that it could not accept a
world divided into nuclear haves and nuclear
have-nots, and stayed out of the treaty.

"The problem with the deal is not that it
acknowledges that India has nuclear weapons,“Burroughs told IPS.”The problem is that both
India and the United States are showing no signs
of working towards the elimination of their
arsenals together with other states possessing
nuclear weapons."

Under the deal, neither country agrees to ratify
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

"And while India agrees to work with the United
States towards a treaty banning production of
fissile materials for nuclear weapons, India is
not required to stop producing materials for
weapons now or to refrain from building
additional weapons from existing material," he
added.

Nor does India assume the obligation the United
States has under the NPT, to negotiate in good
faith cessation of the nuclear arms race at an
early date and the elimination of nuclear
arsenals.

In short, the deal seems to certify India as a
member of a permanent nuclear weapons club,
Burroughs declared.

Mian of Princeton University pointed out that the
deal is also a clear violation of UN Security
Council Resolution 1172, adopted on 6 June 1998,
which was passed unanimously, and called upon
India and Pakistan "immediately to stop their
nuclear weapon development programmes, to refrain
from weaponisation or from the deployment of
nuclear weapons, to cease development of
ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear
weapons and any further production of fissile
material for nuclear weapons.“That resolution also encouraged all States to”prevent the export of equipment, materials or
technology that could in any way assist programs
in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons," said
Mian who along with M. V. Ramana co-authored
"Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S.
Nuclear Deal With India", in the January/February
2006 issue of Arms Control Today.