[SAL 4000]

Senate Approves Nuclear Cooperation With India

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By THOM SHANKER
Published: November 16, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — The Senate gave overwhelming approval late Thursday to President Bush’s deal for nuclear cooperation with India, a vote that expressed that a goal of nurturing India as an ally outweighed concerns over the risks of spreading nuclear know-how and bomb-making materials.

By a vote of 85 to 12, senators agreed to a program that would allow the United States to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The agreement, negotiated by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India in March, calls for the United States to end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components. For its part, India would divide its reactor facilities into civilian and military nuclear programs, with civilian facilities open to international inspections.

Critics have been unwavering in arguing that the pact would rally nations, such as North Korea and Iran, to press ahead with nuclear weapons programs despite international complaints and threats. Opponents of the measure also warned the deal would allow India to build more bombs with its limited stockpile of radioactive material, and could spur a regional nuclear arms race with Pakistan and China.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed the measure’s passage as “one more important step toward a vibrant and exciting relationship between our two great democracies.”

His endorsement was significant, coming from a Senator respected for efforts in nonproliferation and whose name is part of sweeping legislation to secure nuclear bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union. He also expressed “thanks for a truly bipartisan effort” to Senator Joseph R. Biden, the Delaware Democrat set to become Foreign Relations chairman with the new Congress.

While advocates of the measure said it would be an incentive for India to refrain from further nuclear tests, denunciations came quickly from a minority of Senators who opposed it, as well as from critics in the House.

“It is a sad day for U.S. national security when the Senate passes a sweeping exemption to our nonproliferation laws that will allow India to increase its annual bomb-production capacity from 7 to over 40 bombs a year,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, co-chair of the House Bipartisan Taskforce on Nonproliferation. He said the measure “sends the wrong signal at a time when the world is trying to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.”

After the vote, the White House issued a statement from President Bush praising passage of the bill.

“The United States and India enjoy a strategic partnership based upon common values,” the statement said. “The U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation agreement will bring India into the international nuclear nonproliferation mainstream and will increase the transparency of India’s entire civilian nuclear program.”

As an afternoon debate spun out into the evening, the Senate rejected several amendments that sponsors said would clarify or narrow the deal, including one that would have required India to halt all military relations with Iran. The legislation, as passed, does contain a new provision that requires the president to certify that India has joined multinational efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program in advance of the U.S.-India nuclear deal moving forward.

The Senate legislation now must be matched to the House version, which passed in July by a vote of 359 to 68; both chambers then must approve that final language. Even with Senate approval, the package will not move forward until both houses agree to specifics of a nuclear cooperation accord with India. A complementary deal between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency also must be reached.

At the time the plan was announced, India pledged to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities. That would put those reactors under international inspections for the first time. But other reactors would remain under Indian military jurisdiction, and not open to inspectors.

After India and Pakistan conducted surprise nuclear tests about eight years ago, the Clinton administration imposed economic sanctions on both countries. But the Bush Administration’s effort to enlist allies for its global counter-terrorism campaign after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, brought an end to those sanctions, in particular those leveled against Pakistan, viewed as critical in the war in Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/wa...ge&oref=slogin

Hey guys, lets give nuclear materials to India. I wonder what will happen?

China's Hu set to offer Pakistan nuclear plants

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao is poised to unveil an ambitious expansion of nuclear power cooperation with Pakistan when he visits next week, testing China's balance between Pakistan and its wary neighbor, India.

On the first trip to Pakistan by a Chinese president in a decade, Hu is likely to announce that China will help the South Asian nation construct several nuclear plants in coming decades, said analysts and diplomatic sources.

"The political intent is quite certain. The specifics are less certain, but this will be a political gesture above all," said one diplomatic observer in Beijing. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the official secrecy around discussions.

There has been no official word of any nuclear deal during Hu's visit and Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said no new deal was imminent.

"Pakistan and China have long-standing cooperation in the civilian nuclear field and this is continuing. There are no specific agreements at the moment to be signed," she said.

Islamabad has asked China to build it up to six reactors of 600 or more megawatts, at least twice the size of the 300 megawatt reactor China built at Chashma in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, according to the Beijing-based observer.

The broad agreement appears likely, however, to leave the scale and specifics of cooperation for future talks -- and also leave open whether China, with its own bold plans for expanding nuclear power, can spare the expertise to back Pakistan's expansion.

But even a vague agreement will remind the world that China values its "all-weather friend" Pakistan, even while Beijing courts India, a sometimes bitter rival of both countries. Hu will visit India before Pakistan.

"Pakistan has been eager for a nuclear deal and raised it a number of times," said Zhang Li of the Institute of South Asian Studies at Sichuan University in southwest China.

"I think there are signs that Hu will make an announcement during this visit to show relations are developing in a healthy direction."

India and Pakistan both staged nuclear explosions in 1998 and have refused to joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that would oblige them to give up atomic weapons.

An announcement during Hu's visit would cap intense lobbying from Islamabad, eager to expand nuclear ties with Beijing and offset India's influence and U.S.-backed nuclear energy plan.

Last year, India signed an atomic energy pact with the United States that Congress is now studying, but Washington rebuffed Islamabad's efforts to reach a similar agreement. Pakistan has been keen to show that it does not lack other sources of support.

When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf visited Beijing in February, both sides announced they would "continue strengthening cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy".

China's Foreign Ministry would not directly say whether Hu would announce a deal during his visit, but said Beijing wanted to build on the two countries' current pact on nuclear energy cooperation.

"This visit will play a major milestone role," spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters. "We're willing to expand cooperation with Pakistan within the framework of this agreement."

The Beijing-based China Business Times reported in August that China was likely to announce in November it would sell Pakistan six 300-megawatt plants.

China has said any nuclear cooperation would be for peaceful purposes only and would accept international safeguards.

But a nuclear agreement may rankle Washington, worried about China's atomic exports, especially after Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, admitted in 2004 that he sold nuclear know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Before China joined the NPT in 1992, it helped Pakistan develop nuclear weapons, the United States has said.

A Washington official said on Monday that President George W. Bush may raise worries about Pakistan's nuclear program when he meets Hu at the APEC meeting in Hanoi this week.

"We have any many occasions spoken very clearly about our concerns about proliferation and proliferation by Chinese entities to Pakistan," the official said in Washington, according to a State Department Web site (www.fpc.state.gov).

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1-ArticlePage2

[teuf]

they already have nuclear programs. the NPT is designed not to nake non-nuclear nations into nuclear nations.

[Kzin]

The NPT has been a sham for years ... we don't give a fuck if our friends sign it or follow it (Israel, now India), we rant like a 5-yr-old when people who aren't our friends act the same way, and we don't even pay lip-service to living up to our own disarmament commitments under it.

Fortunately, deterrence still works. "You use a nuke and we'll slag you" has proved more effective than "sign this paper or else" at keeping nations from setting one off in the wrong place.

And the dickheads who want them for terrorism ..... they don't sign treaties.

[SAL 4000]

What does this accomplish, other than send a clear message that having, testing, and waving around nuclear weapons to intimidate your neighbors is okay, as long as you buddy-buddy up to us first? What do you think Pakistan's first reaction to this is going to be? Of COURSE they're going to buddy up with China and get nuclear technology from them, they HAVE to, realpolitik demands that they must. The new result is a proxy nuclear arms race between India/US and Pakistan/China that only ends when one side realizes how fucking stupid the concept of nuclear buildup and MAD truly is and steps back from the brink.

The worst part of it all is that this will now cause significant portions of the much smaller Indian and Pakistani economies to be devoted to this insane idea of nuclear buildup, so that they can continue there own little cold war indefinitely. In the mean time, Pakistan has a severe stability problem within it's own country (always a positive for a nuclear power...) and India is missing the basic infrastructure of a modern nation state throughout 90% of the country (don't believe me? Spend a week in India outside of Mumbai or Delhi) So instead of fixing those problems, these countries can go back to scaring the bejesus out of their populations by seeing who has the biggest nuclear... missile.

But wait! There's more! This also helps to continue to destroy any notion of credibility that the US has in dealing with North Korea and Iran.

So now not only are we helping to spark a new arms race, and giving incentive to unstable regimes to build nuclear weapons, and discrediting our own international policy, and guaranteeing our population gets to live under the shadow of nuclear armed belligerent states, but we also get to enjoy the benefits of an already supersized military-industrial complex screaming for more money to protect us from the monsters they helped create.

The NPT can not be used against NK and Iran now that we have let the first nation to develop weapons without signing it get off with nothing. Oh sure, we embargoed them for a while, and now we're fucking helping them?

I can't even imagine the thought process identifying this as a victory.

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by SAL 4000

I can't even imagine the thought process identifying this as a victory.

Well, let's not pretend that this one vote in America's Congress had much affect one way or another on India's future plans re: nuclear weapons development. It only puts American companies in competition with French and German companies that were going to sell the Indians whatever they wanted anyway.

So, that's who identifies this as a victory -- U.S. reactor-tech companies.

But yes, we're applying pressure in the wrong direction: encouraging proliferation and Pakistani-Chinese cooperation and making our non-proliferation statements an obvious, hypocritical joke instead of the opposite.

Ah well, I was never going to Kashmir anyway.