US State Department sanctions, imposed on India's top nuclear scientist Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad for proliferation activities in Iran, cause confusion in New Delhi
Who is lying, the Indian Government Spokesman or Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad?
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - Last Friday (October 01) the Indian government, in a typical ('Who Me?') double-faced response, asked for a a review and withdrawal of the sanctions imposed, by the United States Administration, on a retired Chairman & former Managing Director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Dr. Y.S.R. Prasad, for his clandestine nuclear proliferation activities in Iran, saying that the scientist has not visited Iran 'since mid-2003'. The accused, nuclear scientist, Dr. Prasad, while ridiculing the US sanctions in the Indian media, ended up contradicting the Indian government spokesman by claiming that 'he returned from Iran two months ago'. Who is lying and why?Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad is the same Indian nuclear proliferator whose illegal nuclear proliferation activities in Iran were highlighted in an expose`, published on February 11, 2004, in this newsletter, which column was headlined, "India's 'underground' Nuclear Supply Train to Iran." (/home/khalistancalling/2004/february11.aspx)
Last week (September 29, 2004) Indian media reports revealed that the U.S. State Department had blacklisted nuclear scientiest, Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad, under the Iran Non-Proliferation Act of 2000. (http://www.thehindu.com/2004/10/02/stories/2004100206470100.htm) The Act had legislated that anybody found helping Iranian nuclear capability would be penalized by being denied US contracts and would not be allowed to work for any US entity. 'Help' under the Act, implies, 'transfer of equipment and technology controlled under multilateral export control lists or otherwise having the potential to make a material contribution to the development of weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missile systems.' State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, is reported to have said that the sanctions, already effective since September 23, 2004, were imposed on credible information that several categaries of items, including equipment listed on multilateral control lists, having a potential of contributing to WMDs (Weapons of Mass Distruction), cruise or ballistic missiles, had been transferred to Iran since January 1999.
The Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, in typical doublespeak, put up a brave innocent front, when he announced, last Friday (Oct. 01), that the Indian Government had conveyed to the U.S. that it did not share the U.S. assessment. The Spokesman explained, according to THE HINDU newspaper that, "Dr. Y.S.R. Prasad initially visited Iran (Oct. 02, 2004: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/10/02/stories/2004100206470100.htm) under the aegis of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] technical cooperation programme and thereafter, he had provided consultancy on safety-related aspects connected with Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant and "has not visited Iran since the mid-2003."
The Indian government spokesman also claimed that, "No sale of materials, equipment and technologies was involved. No transfer of sensitive technology has taken place. The Government of India's commitment to prevent onward proliferation is second to none and our track record in this regard is well-known.'' According to media reports when asked how the retention of seven Indian Space Research Organisation subsidiaries on the U.S. 'Entity List' tallied with the fact that India and the U.S. had agreed to the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), the Indian government spokesman said: "You know that [the] NSSP has been agreed to. Phase I has been agreed to and that is indeed a very welcome development in bilateral relations. On this other issue, I would not like to mingle the two. I have stated our position and we have asked for the U.S. Government to review its position.''
According to a, October 02, 2004, report in the Calcutta English newspaper THE TELEGRAPH, (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1041002/asp/nation/story_3831834.asp) Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad contradicted the External Affairs spokesman who had claimed that, "Dr. Prasad had not visited Iran since the mid-2003" by blurting out the truth that, " he had returned from Iran two months ago", where he worked on a Russian nuclear power project which had nothing to do with a weapons programme. When asked about the rule of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy that its officials cannot work for a period of two years after retirement, without permission, Dr. Prasad, said, he was in Iran as a consultant. Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad ridiculed the U.S. sanction against him by telling the TELEGRAPH that, "it was meaningless as the only impact could be that he would not be able to enter the United States."
As we pointed out in the Khalistan Calling newsletter eight months ago that, "Any nuclear activity, peaceful or warlike, above or underground, overt or covert, in South Asia is of great interest and concern to the peaceful, egalitarian 25 million Sikhs (3 million FREE and prospering in the diaspora and 22 milion in India held captive behind India's 'Berlin Wall' on the Indo-Pakistan border) as our homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, is located smack in the middle of warring nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and we will be the first to get hurt in any Indo/Pak altercation."(/home/khalistancalling/2004/february11.aspx)
In the above February 11, 2004 newsletter we reminded the readers that this column has been focusing, over the years, on the nuclear/missile developments in South Asia as they effect the very survival of the Sikh people, their holy shrines and the Sikh Homeland in the subcontinent (stretching from the Pakistan border on the West to the River Jumna on the East) sandwitched as it is between India and Pakistan. As a result when this column 'scooped' the United States by correctly predicting India's 1998 nuclear test before it took place, it was honorably mentioned by the New York Times, way back in its issue of May 17, 1998, in a report by its ace reporter, Ms. Elaine Sciolino. She wrote that, "The US Central Intelligence Agency may have missed India's preparations for its nuclear tests this week but a weekly newsletter (Khalistan Calling of May 07, 1998) by a Sikh separatist group did not." The New York Times report, on page A5, said that this Sikh newsletter predicted India's nuclear test plans days before the nuclear explosions took place."
That particular scoop, predicting India's nuclear tests at Pokharan, by this newsletter, was also honored on Page two of the 2001 book 'Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information' (Cambridge University Press - ISBN0-521-58096-X) by Gregory F. Treverton, currently Senior Consultant at the RAND think tank and former Vice-chair of the powerful US National Intelligence Council. The book has become a MUST read book after it was recommended (on the book jacket) by four former directors of the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), James Schlesinger, James Woolsey, Admiral Bob Inman and Robert M. Gates as well as President Carter's National Security Advisor, the formidable Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski.
According to our sources in India - and we have many many reliable inside contacts in that unhappy, misruled, squalid oligarchy - the nuclear shenanigans of Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad in Iran are just the tip of the iceberg. India, has been, and is, a major nuclear proliferator to Iran (and Brazil) and therefore, is desperate to hide its fingerprints and footprints on Iran's covert nuclear/missile and other military programmes. India has been secretly proliferating its own nuclear technology as well as transferring latest British/Israeli military applied sciences to Iran, in exchange for subsidized oil. As a backgrounder please read our newsletter, dated February 11, 2004, headlined, "India's 'underground' Nuclear Supply Train to Iran," (at: /home/khalistancalling/2004/february11.aspx) and also read an Oct. 23, 2003, report on the SPACE WAR website headlined,"Top Indian nuclear expert helped Iran develop (nuclear) power plant." (http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031023051623.vbyeqa4o.html)
William Shakespeare's famous line in Hamlet that, "So full of artless jealousy is guilt / it spills itself in fearing to be spilt," applies here. No wonder the official Indian government spokesman says one thing and the accused Indian nuclear scientist, Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad, says another! Both are lying.