President Bush toasts India’s President Kalam
By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
THE AMERICANS AND THE INDIANS ARE NUCLEAR CHUMS
There may be a hidden player behind the scenes in this matter
While checking the news wires this morning I was struck by the fact that the USA seems to have given India its blessing on the previously contentious nuclear issue.
Since this is a subject of near vital interest to Bangladesh, here are the hard facts:
Reversing decades of U.S. policy, President Bush ushered India into the world's exclusive nuclear club on Thursday with a landmark agreement to share nuclear reactors, fuel and expertise with this energy-starved nation in return for acceptance of international safeguards.
Eight months in the making, the accord would end India's isolation as a nuclear maverick that defied appeals and developed nuclear weapons. India agreed to separate its nuclear industry - declaring 14 reactors to be commercial facilities and eight as military - and to open the civilian side to international inspections for the first time.
There may be a hidden player behind the scenes in this matter
While checking the news wires this morning I was struck by the fact that the USA seems to have given India its blessing on the previously contentious nuclear issue.
Since this is a subject of near vital interest to Bangladesh, here are the hard facts:
Reversing decades of U.S. policy, President Bush ushered India into the world's exclusive nuclear club on Thursday with a landmark agreement to share nuclear reactors, fuel and expertise with this energy-starved nation in return for acceptance of international safeguards.
Eight months in the making, the accord would end India's isolation as a nuclear maverick that defied appeals and developed nuclear weapons. India agreed to separate its nuclear industry - declaring 14 reactors to be commercial facilities and eight as military - and to open the civilian side to international inspections for the first time.
Congress must approve the agreement, and President Bush acknowledged that that might be difficult because India still refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"I'm trying to think differently, not stay stuck in the past," said President Bush, who has made improving relations with India a goal of his administration. Celebrating their agreement, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, "We have made history today, and I thank you."
The accord was sealed a day before President Bush began an overnight visit to Pakistan, a close ally struggling with its own terrorism problems. An American diplomat and three other people were killed when a suicide attacker rammed a car packed with explosives into theirs. The bombing was in Karachi, about 1,000 miles south of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, where President Bush met President Pervez Musharraf, the military leader who took power in a 1999 coup.
President Bush aides said that there were security concerns about the president going to Pakistan but that their officials were satisfied that adequate precautions were in place. "But this is not a risk-free undertaking," said the national security adviser Stephen Hadley.
The USA-India nuclear deal was seen as the centrepiece of better relations between the world's oldest and most powerful democracy and the world's largest and fastest-growing one.
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave its endorsement on Thursday, calling the agreement "an important step towards satisfying India's growing need for energy, including nuclear technology and fuel, as an engine for development."
"It would also bring India closer as an important partner in the non-proliferation game," the IAEA's director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.
India has more than one billion people, and its presently booming economy has created millions of jobs along with consumer demands that have attracted American businesses. India's middle class has swelled up to 300 million - more than the population of the USA. Nevertheless, 80 % of Indians live on less than $2 a day.
President Bush acknowledged that his country and India had been estranged during the Cold War, when India declared itself to be a non-aligned nation but tilted towards the former Soviet Union "Now the relationship is changing dramatically," he said.
President Bush began the day by paying respects at a memorial to Mahatma (“great soul”). Gandhi, India's independence leader and advocate of non-violence. Following tradition, the president and his wife, Laura, left their shoes outside. The American leader also conferred with the heads of Indian and American businesses, some religious leaders and the head of India's political opposition.
President Bush and Mr Singh announced a new bilateral cooperation on topics ranging from investment, trade and health to agriculture, the environment and even mangoes. Mr Bush agreed to resume imports of the latter after a 17-year ban.
The president ended the day at a state dinner with the Indian State President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam under moonlight in the presidential palace. Waiters in red tunics and red-and-white turbans bowed and scraped to serve broccoli-almond soup, seafood and peach ice cream after toasts of non-alcoholic mango juice by the two heads of state.
The nuclear agreement attracted criticism from congressional circles.
"With one simple move the president has blown a hole in the nuclear rules that the entire world has been playing by and broken his own word to assure that we will not ship nuclear technology to India without the proper safeguards," said Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said that he wanted to receive "detailed briefings" from the administration about this.
"While I believe that the Congress will support this agreement, it is important to take into consideration the non-proliferation concerns raised by some of my colleagues," he said.
In New York, John Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, defended the happenings. "India and Pakistan had never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and therefore they weren't in violation of it by having nuclear programs," he said.
President Bush said that helping India with nuclear power would reduce world demand for energy which has sent petrol prices soaring.
"To the extent that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer," President Bush said.
It also could be a boon for American companies that have been barred from selling nuclear reactors and other nuclear materials to India.
Some commentators have protested that the “deal” rewards “bad behaviour” and undermines efforts to prevent countries such as Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Bush White House replies that India is unique because it has protected its nuclear technology and has not been a “proliferator.”
The administration also argues that it is a good arrangement because it would provide international supervision for a programme that has been secret ever since India entered the nuclear age in 1974.
"In its largest sense, in the geopolitical sense, the agreement today removes a basic irritant in the relations between India and the United States over the last 30 years," said Nick Burns, an undersecretary of state for political affairs.
The agreement has no impact on India's nuclear weapons programme. "It's not a perfect deal in the sense that we haven't captured 100 % of India's nuclear program," Mr Burns said.
The agreement grew out of an agreement that the two presidents signed last July to establish a new relationship in civilian nuclear energy.
The USA and other countries put sanctions on both India and Pakistan after they conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998. But those penalties were lifted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the USA sought allies against al-Qaida.
Do you smell a rat, gentle reader? I do.
I submit that the factor working behind the scenes of this rapprochement between the USA and India is Israel. Going back in time, one discovers that India’s present president, Abdul Kalam, had been the head of its missile and nuclear research programme and in that role had visited Israel twice – in 1996 and 1997.
Also, in 1998, Israel cancelled a proposed visit to India by its own chief of staff - Lt General Amnon Shahak. Why?
It seems that the prospect of close Israeli military ties with India had raised fears in Israel then that a diplomatic dispute might arise with the USA, China and Pakistan. Writing in Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli military analyst Ron Ben Yishai stated that there was always the fear that China might decide to cooperate with Iran, Syria and later with Iraq to retaliate for Israel's support for India.
During 1998, Pakistan had alerted the Islamic world that Israel might bomb its nuclear installations. There has to be a reason for that.
It is a core Israeli policy that Muslim countries should be discouraged from possessing nuclear weaponry or even the means of becoming nuclear capable, including the possession of civilian nuclear power stations. At this time, Pakistan is the only Islamic nation with a significant nuclear weapons arsenal. Israel is no doubt worried.
As Ariel Sharon one famously said to his foreign minister, Israel and the Jewish pressure groups in the USA are highly influential over there. That may well be the hidden impetus behind President Bush’s encouragement of India’s nuclear ambitions.
India is and has been at loggerheads with Pakistan over Kashmir and much besides. One does not have to be exceptionally deep to draw conclusions.
An old Arab proverb goes: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Up to this point in time Pakistan has not been prominent in the quarrel between the Islamic world and the Jews over the Holy Land. However, as time flows on, things change as they always do and Israel’s policymakers realise that.
No doubt they have computed that Pakistan will hesitate ten times before threatening Israel when there might be vengeance from a heavily armed India right on its doorstep. And who is better to facilitate that eventuality than dear old President George Bush (Junior)?
THE END
This feature article was published on March 9, 2006 in the Bangla Mirror newspaper - the first weekly for the Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, read from New Zealand to Iceland
This feature article was published on March 9, 2006 in the Bangla Mirror newspaper - the first weekly for the Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, read from New Zealand to Iceland
posted by Ali @ 2:08 PM
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