Indo-US civilian nuclear agreementbilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of India. The framework for this agreement was a Joint Statement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George Bush, under which India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and place its civil facilities under IAEA safeguards and, in exchange, the United States agreed to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation with India. is the name commonly attributed to a
The Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, also known as the Hyde Act, is the U.S. domestic law that modifies the requirements of Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act to permit nuclear cooperation with IndiaVienna convention, an international treaty such as the 123 agreement cannot be superseded by an internal law such as the Hyde Act. And in particular to negotiate a 123 agreement to operationalise the 2005 Joint Statement. As a domestic U.S. law, the Hyde Act is binding on the United States. The Hyde Act cannot be binding on India's sovereign decisions although it can be construed as prescriptive for future U.S. reactions. As per the
The 123 agreement defines the terms and conditions for bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation, and requires separate approvals by the U.S. Congress and by Indian cabinet ministers . According to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the agreement will help India meet its goal of adding 25,000 MW of nuclear power capacity through imports of nuclear reactors and fuel by 2020.
After the terms of the 123 agreement were concluded on July 27, 2007, it ran into trouble because of stiff opposition in India from the Communist allies of the ruling United Progressive Alliance. They alleged that the deal would undermine the sovereignty of India's foreign policy and also claimed that the Indian government was hiding certain clauses of the deal, which would harm India's indigenous nuclear program, from the media.On July 9, 2008, the Left Front withdrew support to the government reducing its strength to 276 in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the parliament). The government survived a confidence vote in the parliament on July 22, 2008 by 275-256 votes in the backdrop of defections from both camps to the opposite camps.Background
Signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are granted access to civilian nuclear technology from each other as well as nuclear fuel via the Nuclear Suppliers Group in exchange for International Atomic Energy Agency-verified compliance of the NPT tenets. India, Israel, and Pakistan, however, have not signed the NPT, arguing that instead of addressing the central objective of universal and comprehensive non-proliferation, the treaty creates a club of "nuclear haves" and a larger group of "nuclear have-nots" by restricting the legal possession of nuclear weapons to those states that tested them before 1967, who alone are free to possess and multiply their nuclear stockpiles. India insists on a comprehensive action plan for a nuclear-free world within a specific time-frame and has also adopted a voluntary "no first use policy".
In response to a growing Chinese nuclear arsenal, India conducted a nuclear test in 1974 (called "peaceful nuclear explosion" and explicitly not for "offensive" first strike military purposes but which could be used as a "peaceful deterrence"). Led by the US, other nations set up an informal group, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), to control exports of nuclear materials, equipment and technology. As a result, India was left outside the international nuclear order. India conducted 5 more nuclear tests in May, 1998 at Pokhran.
Rationale behind the agreement
Competition for conventional energy
The growing energy demands of the Indian and Chinese economies have raised questions on the impact of global availability to conventional energy.The Bush Administration has concluded that an Indian shift toward nuclear energy is in the best interest for America to secure its energy needs of coal, crude oil, and natural gas.
Nuclear non proliferation
While India still harbours aspirations of being recognised as a nuclear power before considering signing the NPT as a nuclear weapons state[citation needed] (which would be possible if the current 1967 cutoff in the definition of a "nuclear weapon state" were pushed to 1975), other parties to the NPT are not likely to support such an amendment. As a compromise, the proposed civil nuclear agreement implicitly recognises India's "de facto" status even without signing the NPT. The Bush administration justifies a nuclear pact with India because it is important in helping to advance the non-proliferation framework by formally recognising India's strong non-proliferation record even though it has not signed the NPT. The former Under Secretary of State of Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, one of the architects of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal said “India’s trust, its credibility, the fact that it has promised to create a state-of-the-art facility, monitored by the IAEA, to begin a new export control regime in place, because it has not proliferated the nuclear technology, we can’t say that about Pakistan.” when asked whether the U.S. would offer a nuclear deal with Pakistan on the lines of the Indo-U.S. deal. Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would be in charge of inspecting India's civilian reactors has praised the deal as "it would also bring India closer as an important partner in the nonproliferation regime". However, members of the IAEA safeguards staff have made it clear that Indian demands that New Delhi be allowed to determine when Indian reactors might be inspected could undermine the IAEA safeguards system.
Economic considerations
Financially, the U.S. also expects that such a deal could spur India's economic growth and bring in $150 billion in the next decade for nuclear power plants, of which the US wants a share. It is India's stated objective to increase the production of nuclear power generation from its present capacity of 4,000 MWe to 20,000 MWe in the next decade. However, the developmental economic advising firm Dalberg, which advises the IMF and the World Bank, moreover, has done its own analysis of the economic value of investing in nuclear power development in India. Their conclusion is that for the next 20 years such investments are likely to be far less valuable economically or environmentally than a variety of other measures to increase electricity production in India. They have noted that U.S. nuclear vendors cannot sell any reactors to India unless and until India caps third party liabilities and or establishes a credible liability pool to protect U.S. firms from being sued in the case of an accident or a terrorist act of sabotage against nuclear plants.
Strategic
Since the end of the Cold War, The Pentagon, along with certain U.S. ambassadors such as Robert Blackwill, have requested increased strategic ties with India and a de-hyphenization of Pakistan with India.
While India is self-sufficient in thorium, possessing 25% of the world's known and economically viable thorium, it possesses a meager 1% of the similarly calculated global uranium reserves. Indian support for cooperation with the U.S. centers around the issue of obtaining a steady supply of sufficient energy for the economy to grow. Indian opposition to the pact centers around the concessions that would need to be made, as well as the likely de-prioritization of research into a thorium fuel-cycle if uranium becomes highly available given the well understood utilization of uranium in a nuclear fuel cycle.
Agreement
On March 2, 2006 in New Delhi, George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh signed a Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, following an initiation during the July 2005 summit in Washington between the two leaders over civilian nuclear cooperation.
Heavily endorsed by the White House, the agreement is thought to be a major victory to George W. Bush's foreign policy initiative and was described by many lawmakers as a cornerstone of the new strategic partnership between the two countries. The agreement is widely considered to help India fulfill its soaring energy demands and enter the U.S. and India into a strategic partnership. The Pentagon speculates this will help ease global demand for crude oil and natural gas.
On August 3, 2007, both the countries released the full text of the 123 agreement.
