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Our good Indian friend Sandhya Jain and his site www.vijayvaani.com carry out uphill struggle for Indian nuclear independence against the US attempts to cage India in. Somehow, only Israel and the US are supposed to have nuclear weapons, all the rest should be disarmed – according to the Torah from Capitol Hill. Here we offer you three articles from Sandhya’s site, explaining why it is important to keep India free from American interference.

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/article_26au.htm

 

Indo-US Nuclear deal: Road to serfdom
Virendra Parekh
26 August 2008

In an ultimate irony, only foreigners ( NSG , US Congressmen) can save us from our own leaders. A great fraud is being perpetrated on the people of India in the form of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Even as vital national interests - commercial, strategic and diplomatic - are being bartered away in return for vague promises of selective cooperation, our leaders try to soothe us by bland assertions and self-serving opinions.

 

In the millions of words expended on the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation deal, there is no convincing answer to a simple question: If the deal is of such a great benefit to India , if it is indeed a great diplomatic triumph for India , why have all the pulls and pressures, pushes and shoves come from America ?

 

Each time the deal has shown signs of falling through, American pressure has revived it. Every time it looked like missing a deadline, Americans generously extended the deadline… They passed a special law (the Hyde Act) 'for our benefit' and promised to help us out at global forums like International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG). Throughout the tedious negotiations between the UPA and the Left and between India and IAEA, the Americans steadily maintained relentless pressure on everyone to move faster. Why is a superpower, which has never favoured us on life-and death issues like terrorism, Pakistan or Kashmir , so keen to oblige us in this particular matter?

 

For those familiar with the actual contents of the deal (as opposed to official propaganda), the answer is no secret: the deal is loaded so heavily in favour of America and so heavily against India, that Americans will be willing to sign it any time India agrees.

 

For once Americans cannot be accused of duplicity. They have been clear in setting forth what they want us to do before we could expect anything from them. The subterfuges, half-truths and plain lies came from Indian leaders and officials. Americans want business worth billions of dollars for their defunct nuclear power industry; they want India never again to explode a nuclear device; they want it to stop producing fissile material that can be used in making bombs and they want India's foreign policy to be in line with their own. The deal is designed as an instrument to achieve these objectives, without giving India anything substantial in return.

 

Over the three years since it was first mooted, the deal has been transformed from a key to power (in every sense) into a road to bondage in perpetuity. At every stage, there were voices of caution and protest from nuclear scientists, strategic analysts, defence experts – all were brazenly ignored.

 

The doors of international nuclear trade were shut on India after it conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. Washington led the nuclear apartheid regime and is the only country to have written the nuclear blockade of India into laws. Now that it has relaxed its laws with the India-specific Hyde Act, New Delhi , despite not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) can buy much-needed nuclear fuel, equipment, components and technology to feed and upgrade its under-performing and undernourished civilian nuclear energy sector, if certain conditions are met.

 

This is touted as a great diplomatic achievement. The Prime Minister insists every patriotic Indian must support it. But American cooperation is reversible, conditional on India 's good behaviour on America 's non-proliferation concerns and comes at a huge cost -commercial, diplomatic and strategic.

 

India will be sinking billions of dollars in nuclear power plants totally dependent on imported fuel. The fuel will be America 's handle for ensuring India 's good behaviour. There is no guarantee of uninterrupted fuel supply for imported reactors. Nor will India be allowed to stockpile enough uranium supplies for the lifespan of these reactors. And US will cut off all cooperation, including fuel supply, if India oversteps the line on the strategic side. It will also persuade other members of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) to do the same. This could act as a severe deterrent in considering strategic options.

 

If fuel is the instrument to keep India on a leash, the requirement of the US President to submit reports to Congress is the mechanism to accomplish it. The US President has to keep a close watch on all nuclear activity in India and send his assessments to appropriate Congressional committees to keep them fully informed of the facts and implications of any significant nuclear activities of India . These reporting requirements are fairly exhaustive, ranging from the amount of uranium mined in India to whether India is cooperating with US on Iran . Hyde Act asks India to desist from nuclear testing, to throw open its reactors to intrusive international inspection, to kowtow American line on non-proliferation initiatives, and to keep its foreign policy congruent with that of the US , or else

 

Notice that the onus is on India to convince the US President and lawmakers that it is indeed fulfilling its obligations. If for his own reasons, the US president refuses to certify India 's compliance with terms of the deal, there is nothing India can do. Under the 123 Agreement, India has no legally enforceable rights, while its obligations are extensive and perpetual.

 

When the US House of Representatives passed the Hyde Act and the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions would jeopardize our strategic interests, we were told, 'But this is just the House Bill. Our concerns will be taken care of in the Senate bill.' When the Senate passed the bill and it could no longer be denied that its provisions made even deeper inroads into our strategic interests, we were told, 'But we have to wait for the Joint Conference of the two Houses to hammer out a final version. That will take care of our concerns.' When the final version was passed, and it could no longer be denied that it contained the harshest features of each version, we were told, 'But India is not bound by laws made by any other country. We have to wait for the 123 Agreement. That will take care of our concerns.'

 

We then had the 123 Agreement, so-called because it is made under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. And it nailed, inter alia, the brave assertion that we are not bound by the laws of any other country. The agreement explicitly states that 'each party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.' In the case of the US, the relevant 'national laws' include the original Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nonproliferation Treaty Act, and the Hyde Act of December 2006.

 

To operationalise the Indo-US deal, India has to sign a safeguards agreement with the global NPT watch dog IAEA specifying what kind of inspections and controls our nuclear reactors will be subjected to. This will have to be followed by a waiver from the NSG, before US Congress ratifies the 123 Agreement.

 

We now have the safeguards agreement with the IAEA. We were told this will be an India-specific agreement, that it will grant us special status, setting us apart from the non-nuclear weapon states and tacitly accord us a status similar to that enjoyed by the P5. But the fine print of the agreement shows it strongly resembles accords with non-nuclear weapons states, and does not acknowledge India as a nuclear power. Like them, India will be putting its entire civilian nuclear programme under permanent, legally irrevocable international inspections, and also pay for their enforcement.

 

What is particularly galling is that India will be undertaking these onerous obligations forever without getting any legally enforceable right on any core issue. There are four issues of great importance to India . Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured Parliament categorically that the final agreement would take into account India 's concerns on these issues. On each issue, the Agreement makes mincemeat of his solemn assurances.

 

Uninterrupted supply of fuel for reactors

 

Dr. Singh pledged in Parliament to link perpetual IAEA inspections to perpetual fuel supply. But no such right has been secured from IAEA and we shall be totally at the mercy of fuel suppliers. The preamble to the IAEA agreement carries a perfunctory cosmetic reference to "corrective measures" India "may" take in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies.  The agreement does not define these corrective measures and does not give India any right to take such measures. The use of the word 'may" instead of "shall" in this context means India has no legal entitlement.

 

The earlier 123 agreement with the US, instead of granting India the right to take corrective measures in response to a fuel-supply disruption, merely recorded that New Delhi will seek such a right in the IAEA accord. But in the India-IAEA accord, no such right has been secured in definable terms.

 

The Hyde Act which governs the 123 Agreement clearly stipulates that 'any nuclear power reactor fuel reserve provided to India should be commensurate with reasonable reactor operating requirements.' So India will not be able to stockpile fuel reserves for the lifetime of reactors, and should US stop fuel supplies, for instance, in the event of India testing a nuclear device, US would ensure that no other member of the NSG shall supply fuel to India .

 

Reprocessing of spent fuel

 

The 123 Agreement and the Hyde Act which governs it deny India the unfettered right either to reprocess spent fuel or ship it back to US for disposal. Right to reprocessing is crucial to India 's three-stage nuclear programme:

 

Stage I: Construction of reactors run on natural uranium and heavy water. Spent fuel from these reactors is reprocessed to obtain plutonium.

 

Stage II: Construction of Fast Breeder Reactors fuelled by plutonium produced in Stage I. One variant of the FBR uses plutonium with U-238 to produce energy and more plutonium. Plutonium made available from fast breeder reactors goes into India 's atom bombs and is crucial to develop our nuclear arsenal. Another variant uses a mix of plutonium and thorium to produce energy with uranium 233 (U-233) as a byproduct.

 

Stage III: Construct power reactors which use U-233 / thorium as fuel and produce energy and more U-233.

 

India is currently working at Stage II and our scientists have been able to put together a prototype fast breeder reactor. A second reactor is being built.

 

The three-stage nuclear programme conceived by Dr. Homi Bhabha in 1950 emphasises greater use of thorium (which we have in abundance) and minimum dependence on uranium, on which we are short. The US , for its own commercial and strategic interests, wants us to take a route where we shall be permanently dependent on imported uranium. That explains its foot-dragging on giving reprocessing rights to India .

 

Hence, India will have to depend on uranium supplies from a cartel notorious for resorting to price manipulations. In recent years, the price of uranium has risen six times from the usual average of about $25 per kg. With demand in India and China expected to rise, the price of uranium, already increasing faster than oil, will rise further.

 

Worse, Americans have been saying categorically that all future fast-breeder reactors, which can yield material for bombs, will be covered by safeguards. This means that the fast breeder programme, a key link to our strategic programme, will be stymied. In brief, our military nuclear programme, dependent on fissile material from facilities not covered by safeguards, will be capped as a prelude to an ultimate rollback. As a foretaste of things to come, under American pressure, Manmohan Singh has already ordered permanent closure of our fast-breeder reactor Cirus, one of India 's two reactors producing bomb-grade plutonium.

 

Nuclear Test

 

Several scientists have pointed out that India needs many more nuclear tests before it can refine its arsenal into a credible nuclear deterrent.

 

Nothing in the 123 Agreement prohibits India from conducting fresh tests. But the US has made it explicit that if India carries out a nuclear test, all N-cooperation will be terminated and US will have the right to demand return of any nuclear materials and equipment transferred under the agreement. Thus, the 123 agreement converts what has till now been a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear tests into a binding bilateral legal obligation; once NSG gets into the act, it will become a multilateral obligation.

 

India will be technically free to test, but the consequences will be swift and heavy, involving such colossal economic costs as to be impossible. China and Pakistan do not have to worry about such fetters.

 

Transfer of nuclear technology and materials

 

India expected the complete and irreversible removal of existing restrictions on all aspects of a complete nuclear fuel cycle ‑ ranging from nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, to re-processing spent fuel. What it got is cooperation on aspects of the associated nuclear fuel cycle. This arrangement is not about full cooperation but selective participation to the extent that it serves American commercial and non-proliferation interests. 

 

The contention that the nuclear deal will open the floodgates of technology transfer to India is largely wishful thinking. Article 5.2 of the much vaunted 123 Agreement categorically states that transfers of "sensitive nuclear technology" would require an amendment and that transfers of "dual use items that could be used in enrichment, reprocessing or heavy water production facilities will be subject to the parties' respective laws, regulations and licence policies". This means that under the nuclear deal India has not even secured full civil nuclear cooperation, and transfer of technology from the US in this area will be less than complete.

 

The UPA Government has led India into a binding commitment that has little to do with production of civilian nuclear energy and everything to do with bringing us within the restrictive framework of nuclear non-proliferation. The 'deal' is not about liberating India from the clutches of wayward oil-producing nations and the vagaries of fossil fuel, but binding us to the interests of the non-proliferation lobby and the business interests of the nuclear power industry.

 

Having sunk billions of dollars into importing nuclear power reactors and even more in industries dependent on power from those reactors, India will be compelled to think twice before annoying the US on any count. That is the American strategy behind the strategic partnership with India . 

 

This is the deal that in which the Prime Minister has invested so much of his meagre political capital. It is a tragedy that a person who got the prime ministerial chair fortuitously, whose party has only around 150 MPs in the Lok Sabha (and he is not one of them) is all set to foist this deal on the country without any further discussion to meet the deadline set by his American masters — sorry, friends.    

 

India will be making a grave mistake - like the ones Nehru made in Kashmir and Tibet - if it continues to pursue the deal in terms of the 123 Agreement and IAEA pact. The consequences will haunt us for generations.

 

The author is Executive Editor, Corporate India, and lives in Mumbai

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=98

Manmohan outsources political sovereignty

 

by Sandhya Jain

09 Sep 2008

Some things are scandalously evident in the current nuclear tamasha in the capital, even to a non-specialist like this writer.

 One, the drama over India getting the so-called waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group was totally engineered by the West. The purpose was to heighten tensions in New Delhi and make it agree to script changes which would not be taken to the Union Cabinet, the Parliament where votes had to be purchased for the Government to survive 22 July in order to clinch the Indo-US nuclear (slave) treaty, or made known to the people of India. The waiver now will mean whatever the Americans say it means, and we can dismiss the verbosity of UPA spokespersons with the contempt they deserve.

It is still unclear what has been waived, other than the American self-imposed embargo on n-reactor and uranium sales to India, which its own nuclear lobby was chafing at. Yet it is pertinent that the day the waiver came through, NDTV sought the views of Daryl G Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association of America. Reacting to the brouhaha over the "letter leak," he said there was clarity in Washington about the deal and he was compelled to admit that the Indian criticism that Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) had been telling lies to the nation was true! He was, of course, quickly cut off, and Mr. Salman Khurshid of the Congress made a brief statutory denial! If only it was that simple.

Two, the Manmohan Singh regime completely surrendered India’s political sovereignty to the United States at a major international forum by letting Washington take over the negotiations with Western countries opposing the waiver, and forcing Beijing to withdraw the unexpected hand revealed at Vienna.

This should be a matter of deep shame to all Indians, but sadly the matter has not got the attention it deserves. Why did the UPA government not let the waiver decision be postponed till Indian diplomats could persuade all member-countries to come on board? In what way did this regime’s survival depend on the nuclear deal ˆ this question deserves an answer.

Worse, to analysts who understand the Chinese psyche, the momentary retreat does not demonstrate the superior diplomacy of President George Bush. It, in fact, signals Beijing’s intention to seriously unravel the current nuclear architecture of the world, which may not be a bad thing.

As of now, Beijing has hinted that Pakistan deserves a similar deal. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to agree with this. Yet anyone with half a brain can see that Pakistan has demonstrably more friends who will de facto help it in its nuclear quest; indeed, it got there thanks to the United States and China!

Iran will now find a friend in Beijing, especially if New Delhi persists in its suicidal servitude towards Washington. Finally, what has gone totally unnoticed in Indian media in recent weeks is the fact that North Korea was withdrawn its decision to rollback its nuclear programme! In other words, there is going to be proliferation in Asia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not even begun to think that if Korea acquires the bomb (which it will, thanks again to China), then Japan cannot lag behind. Tokyo already has enough fissile material to do the needful – it needs only to rediscover its Samurai ethos. More pertinently, it is being quietly wooed by both its Russian and Chinese neighbours! Does New Delhi even know? South Block is totally unable to see the emerging trends in the neighbourhood and to discuss Euro-Central-and-Asian security and prosperity in a paradigm guaranteed by Russia, China, India and Japan.

Third, surrender does not pay. It is a fitting humiliation – and divine justice for grovelling before the White House – that Australia has refused to sell uranium until India signs the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty! And why not – if New Delhi can stoop so low, why not a little bit lower?

Fourth, BJP president Rajnath Singh is right when he says that the Indo-US nuclear deal has no benefits for India. Regardless of the price at which the waiver was secured at Vienna, no atomic fuel will be available before 2020 – a good twelve years away! Then, the investment of several thousand crores of rupees will not yield nuclear energy amounting to more than 6% the national energy requirement, so the deal is to divert tax-payers’ money for other purposes.

Fifth, the Bush Administration’s "secret letter" made it clear that the real motive behind Washington securing the NSG waiver for India was the "likely economic benefits of this partnership" to the American private sector! Yes, just as the Army has a country in Pakistan, so the Corporate Sector has a Government in America – the people do not count in either country, notwithstanding the forms of government. The nuclear deal is the brain-child of the dying nuclear industry of America which needs the Indian market to rejuvenate itself. So, some years down the line, we can expect kickbacks scandals in this area as well.

Rather than bank on a regime proved to be lying to the Indian people, I would rely upon nuclear scientist Dr. P.K. Iyengar, who unequivocally states that nuclear tests are imperative to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent. Dr Iyengar refutes the view that computer simulation is enough to test the validity of an atomic weapon, pointing out that when we carry out tests of new aircraft before handing it over to users, we cannot deliver a nuclear bomb without testing! India can’t rely upon computer simulation after just six tests. America can do it as it has conducted over 2000 nuclear tests; Russia has made 1000 tests and France nearly 300. Dr Iyengar rightly queries the voluntary moratorium on n-weapon testing by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the May 1998 tests, when Pakistan and China made no such moves.

As of now, it seems the only genuine opposition to the nuclear surrender is by the Left parties; the BJP’s dominant faction has been speaking from both sides of its mouth. It has supported New Delhi’s utterly undesirable hostility towards friendly Teheran, supported a strategic alliance with Washington (which means shameful subordination of the type witnessed at Vienna where America took over New Delhi’s job), and failed to tell us what it is supposed to be opposing in the deal.

It is inexplicable why BJP chief ministers were not present to manage their state MPs on 22 July, when it was known that money was flowing around. Why did the party not do its own sting operation and release the tapes directly to the media, as it did once in Chattisgarh? Finally, the party must explain why it let the trust vote be held the same evening, when common sense dictated that it should have stalled the House till investigations in the cash-for-votes were over or the tapes telecast by all channels.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat is right that the task ahead is to see that a new government comes to power and terminates the 123 Agreement. The truth is that the full picture has still not emerged regarding the "continuous concessions" India made in Vienna over the past three days, which virtually amount to secret clauses in a treaty. What we do know is that India has accepted restrictions on transfer of sensitive technology, including technology for reprocessing and enrichment. Thus, we have indirectly entered the non-proliferation regime without any commensurate benefits.

Worse, India has agreed to abide by an Additional Protocol with the IAEA which is yet to be finalised, as part of the basis for the waiver. This also is without the knowledge of the Union Cabinet, the Parliament, and the people. In other words, Washington is now going to screw all the nuts-and-bolts necessary to stop India developing state-of-the-art missile technology and permanently capping the nuclear weapons programme. The "clean and unconditional" waiver is nothing but an unconditional surrender of India’s self-esteem and political independence.

 

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=103

Left must reinvent itself to defeat US hegemony

Sandhya Jain

12 Sep 2008

 

           

If CPM general secretary Prakash Karat seriously hopes to derail the Indo-US nuclear deal, he would know that the only way to do this is through the political process.

This involves conceiving a gigantic war strategy, which in turn involves seeking a spectrum of allies. In the Mahabharata war, no tribe was too humble to be wooed by the ultimately successful Pandavas. Yet the most astonishing aspect of current CPM thinking is an inability to negotiate new political friendships and break the stranglehold of sterile ideological paradigms.

Two silent, but staggering, ideological mutinies have taken place in our neighbourhood, but have gone almost unnoticed because the West has kept quiet and India’s imitative elites can’t think for themselves. I speak, of course, of the once Communist China and the former Soviet Union.

Both have lessons for the Left Parties and left-of-centre chattering classes, which have been penetrated by the American establishment to the chagrin of the Left. That is why the solitary, but singularly devastating, defection from the ranks of the Left was Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who resigned his controversial Office-of-Profit only on the day of the Confidence Vote on 22 July 2008. He proved invaluable to the ruling dispensation when he refused to postpone voting after the cash-for-votes scam was reported to him, and persuaded the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. L.K. Advani, to play ball. Another unpleasant surprise (for the Left) was Harvard Master Amartya Sen coming all the way to a Delhi television studio to support the nuclear deal, though it is quite outside his area of expertise.

To return to the mutinies, witness the re-emergence of Russia under then President Vladimir Putin. In a nutshell, what Mr. Putin has done is to carry the moral kernel of the communist vision into a new Russia rising on the strength of sovereign (national) wealth, married to nationalism and the traditional religion and spirituality of the Russian people. The horrors of Leninism-Stalinism are not replaced by the bestial Corporate Tyranny of the West, but the individual pursuit of material stability allowed under the moral authority of the Russian Orthodox Church and the physical strength of the Russian State.

The case of China is less apparent, but will manifest more overtly in coming months. China, of course, is one of the greatest purveyors of sovereign wealth funds. Less well known is the fact that it has woken up to the dangers of moral sterility and cultural vacuum – a dangerous historical experiment that eroded its civilisational foundations and made it prey to dangerous foreign intrusions, especially after it opened up its economy. That China has learnt its lessons shows in the successful Olympics – I don’t mean the gold medal tally, but the success in preventing hordes of evangelists slipping into the country by confiscating all imported Bibles and making some strategic arrests! Confucius Centres are now being opened all over the world, and China is atoning for the folly of treating religions alien to its soil and ethos at par with its natal faith.

That brings us to the vapid Indian elite that peddles slogans while obsessively striving for wealth available-for-free (i.e., for which others will pay the price). There is growing jubilation in this crowd – which cuts across party lines – that the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi has succeeded in getting a lame duck regime to compromise India’s nuclear capability. Worse, a regime clearly on its way out has promised Washington that it will NOT examine the best nuclear deals available when making purchases, but will wait till America is legally enabled to make a deal with India. Even the East India Company never had it so good!

 

 

 

If Mr. Prakash Karat looks at our neighbourhood, he would realise the importance of foreign origins and foreign allegiances in subverting nations. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, product of a US-sponsored coloured revolution, has a Dutch or American wife. The President of Ukraine is also married to an American, and the Polish Defence Minister who signed the recent controversial missile defense shield with the US is an American citizen who was born there in the famous helicopter-making Sikorski family. It is widely known that many other members of East European governments have American citizenship or have been educated and trained there.

This is significant, and probably explains why the World Bank babu who “accidentally” became Prime Minister of India promptly undertook “administrative reforms” (sic) that involved opening the entire IAS to American penetration via the American universities. Any new dispensation in New Delhi must immediately put an end to this infiltration. We should also put in place a system that monitors serving bureaucrats who send their children abroad, and particularly see if there is any connection between the jobs held by children and the posts occupied by their parents in New Delhi.

To go back further, it should now be evident why the Vajpayee Government was sold a lemon and instigated to open India to a dangerous concept called ‘dual citizenship,’ which mercifully, only the blooming menace of Islamic jihad prevented from becoming a reality. The twin-lemon sold at this time was the myth that the Indians who migrated to America and London in quest of Mammon constituted a ‘valuable resource’ that India should pay heed to. Many skillfully-groomed public intellectuals (whatever that means) now descend on India several times a year to tutor the chattering classes and New Age cultists about how to re-craft Hindu society to conform to the comfort and convenience of Christian America. They are ably abetted by an army of retired government servants.

Sonia Gandhi’s Quattrochi-Bofors saga is well-known, but her stranglehold over the UPA is not even whispered about. Mr. Karat should know that the legendary Soviet dissident, late Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned that a nation must always guard itself against foreigners seeking its wealth or wanting to invade (or dominate). Any regime that disarms the nation is immoral and illegitimate – and this is what Sonia Gandhi has made the UPA do by de facto attacking our nuclear capabilities.

The way out – and the way forward – is for the Left to shed the burden of Nehruvian Secularism and its arid anti-Hindu bias, to manfully embrace Sanatan Dharma as the civilisational ethos of India, to admit it provides honour to religions born elsewhere, to end the offensive baiting of the Hindu community when its fights for cultural survival in its native land, and to invite all well-meaning individuals and groups to face the external threats and internal fifth column undermining the nation.

If Mr. Karat is serious that if the Left has a say in the next Government it will scrap the 123 Agreement, then he must know that it is his responsibility to ensure that the Left has sufficient intellectual and moral leverage with the next set up in New Delhi. This means a working relationship with the entire political spectrum, to work out a viable Action Plan for the immediate and not-so-immediate future.

There is an immediate need to galvanise the nation – to demonstrate that the UPA has betrayed the nation by compromising its strategic security and failing to meet its energy needs (the last lie being repeatedly made by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi). The people should be told that energy is decades away, will come at a prohibitive cost, and will not cover more than 6% of total needs!

More pertinently – people should be told that if India buys multi-billion dollar reactors and is DENIED Uranium because, say, it signed the gas pipeline deal with Iran – then the famous 123 Agreement can be invoked, and it DOES NOT HAVE AN ARBITRATION CLAUSE! Yes, it is a one-sided slave treaty.

It may be pertinent to add that while India agreed to clauses stipulating the return of fuel in the event of a nuclear test, there was NO attempt to negotiate a return of Indian investment in buying the reactors thus rendered useless. Surely this was the first question a self-respecting regime should have raised?

The Left should ask the entire range of non-Congress political parties to commit in advance of the elections that no matter what the Lame Duck Manmohan Singh regime promises to the Lame Duck George Bush regime – the next Indian Government will ensure that there is NO NUCLEAR COMMERCE with AMERICA! At any price.

No effort must be spared to make it clear to Washington that the Indian Parliament and people dislike the deal. Political parties may also like to commit in advance that they will move in concert to bring about appropriate Constitutional Amendments to ensure that no future government can commit the nation to such serious constraints without honest information, debate, and consent.

 

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