Accident liability laws hamper Indo-US nuclear deal: Mazari

Indo-US nuclear deal is facing hurdles, as a result of stringent accident conditionalities, besides keeping the US private sector (GE and Westinghouse Electric) away from $150 billion Indian atomic power market. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton took up the issue with New Delhi during her recent visit.
Other suppliers such as France and Russia have rushed to tap lucrative Indian nuclear power market. The Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) is not in a position to give full membership to a country that is not a signatory to Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This was stated on Saturday by Shirin Mazari, Head of Strategic Technology Resources and former Dean of Defence and Strategic Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, while addressing media on 'Is the US-India nuclear deal unravelling', adding that the House of Representative (HR) 1280 Bill poses a threat to US nuclear trade and may not be passed by US Congress.
Dr Mazari said that in India concern is prevailing in terms of materialising the commercial aspects of setting up nuclear power plants by US companies. She said, "the US is also eyeing N-trade barriers with India due to strong accident liability laws... a result of Bhopal Union Carbide tragedy.... which could result in nuclear power companies paying out billions in compensation in case of an accident."
Dr Mazari maintained, "The US is pressing India into acceding to the international Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC). US officials see this as a major problem to have the US be left out in the cold because India refused to apply international norms instead of its own extra stringent ones on accident liability so that the US would not be able to profit from all of the hard work that we've put into that - obviously a reference to the ground-breaking 123 Agreement and its follow ups in the IAEA and elsewhere!"
With all these developments going on, even if it is too early to declare that the Indo-US nuclear deal is unravelling, but the actual operationalisation of the deal is not proceeding as smoothly as anticipated and in the long run it will be difficult for the US and the Supplier Cartels to move in the direction being sought by the US and India, she added.
"So in many ways the deal is all set to unravel unless the NSG undermines its own logic - in which case it will be difficult to make only Pakistan the target of punitive measures. But Pakistani diplomacy needs to be stronger and more active on this count. And if the Indian liability laws keep US firms out of the lucrative Indian market we may see US Congress act to undermine the 123 Agreement - especially since HR 1280 is now US Congress," Mazari observed.
For Pakistan the time has come to insist on its role as a viable player in civil nuclear trade within the scope of IAEA safeguards. It is time we made it clear to the rest of the world that we cannot be beaten endlessly with the A Q Khan issue given how the US and other NPT members have violated their 'Nil' obligations and effectively proliferated to India and given how there is a long list of recorded proliferation by the Indian state itself including the nuclear deal with the Saddam regime. There is no need for Pakistan to be on the defensive as it seeks to push its legitimate nuclear interests forward, she maintained.
Earlier, she said that at a time when the US has come out openly and declared that it sees India as the hegemony in the region and has continued to move on all fronts to strengthen the Indo-US strategic alliance, developments in the nuclear issue area are undermining one of the cornerstones of the alliance - the Indo-US nuclear deal (a 123 Agreement under US law).
Membership of the NSG is also based on three criteria, one of which is membership of the NPT. The US had sought to alter this merely a consideration not a conditionality to accommodate India into the NSG, she opined. The results of the NSG meeting held in Netherlands in June this year, despite the lobbying by the US and its circulation of a "food for thought paper," shocked India and seemed to show that contrary to what had been reflected in the IAEA BoG over passage of special safeguards agreement for India, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was not as ready to accept India as a member of its cartel when it does not fulfil the basic criteria required for this membership.
Dr Mazari said that even more distressing for India was the NSG decision to put further controls on the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies, adding that one needs to recall that India had sought and received a special IAEA safeguards agreement with a number of escape clauses - an unprecedented development in IAEA safeguards.
But it is not just the NSG that has had a negative impact on the Indo-US desire to bring India into the nuclear mainstream and thereby de facto get it recognition as a nuclear weapon state. Other developments may also undermine the 123 Agreement and dent the euphoric US-India partnership, she concluded.