Indo-US ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal in limbo in US Congress
American Sikhs need to educate US Lawmakers about Indian ‘activities’ in Iran & remind them of how & why US imposed sanctions on retired Indian nuclear scientist Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - The ‘battle’ over the India-United States ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal, agreed to in March 2006 during President Bush’s state visit to India (discussed in our column on March 29, 2006 headlined, “Leading American political commentator Pat Buchanan ridicules the ‘Nukes- for-Mangoes’ Indo/ US deal”: www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2006/march29.aspx has formally begun with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relation’s Committee of the US Congress last Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Rice did seem to have temporarily succeeded in softening up senior Democratic Senators John Kerry and Joseph Biden. But it's not certain that they will vote for the special legislation pertaining to the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal (which has shaken up the global nuclear order) in an un-amended form. Sen. Barbara Boxer made it quite clear to Secretary Rice that she did not think closer US-India ties would be a counter-weight to China. Such thinking, she added, is not only, “outdated and dangerous but it flies in the face of reality”. Sen. Boxer said during the Foreign Relations Committee hearing that her areas of concern lay in the US “having rewarded a nation for not signing the NPT, giving India the capacity to produce more fissile material and more nuclear weapons than it otherwise could.” Sen. Boxer also thought that changing current US law for the sake of the deal was a ‘bad precedent’ as she felt that the agreement would have a negative effect on US policy towards Iran and North Korea.
It's plain that the hopes expressed by Indian spin-masters, only a couple of weeks ago, that the deal would 'sail through' US Congress were misplaced and exaggerated. At that time, the Non-Resident Indian-dominated US-India Public Affairs Committee (an Indian lobbying group of photo-opportunity seekers) bragged that at least 12 of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee's 18 members would back it. The Indian government stepped up its lobbying efforts and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran came to the United States. The agreement, the Times of India headline declared, 'looks like [a] done deal…' Following Saran's Washington visit, however, the same paper had to eat crow and had to admit that: “the N-deal may not get past US Congress. It may have to wait perhaps a lot longer than the weeks and months anticipated…” In general, the special legislation introduced by the Bush administration in the Congress to facilitate nuclear commerce with India has had a hostile reception among US Law-makers on the Hill. The Federation of American Scientists has launched a signature campaign against it. Many senators and members of the House International Relations Committee (HIRC) have voiced their opposition to it. Even ten members of the India caucus, the largest country-specific grouping in the US Congress, are among the 18 Congressmen who introduced a Bill in Congress opposing the deal. Also former President Jimmy Carter, in cautioning policy-makers, stated that the Indo-US nuclear deal "is just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation." Now there is talk in New Delhi that if the deal isn't ratified soon, it may fall through. The Indian government is now pinning its hopes on senior Congressmen who are due to visit India, including Senators Edward Kennedy (Democrat) and Chuck Hagel (Republican), and House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
This Indo-US ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal, it is becoming obvious by the day, is also of great interest to America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby. It is clear that India’s foreign office ‘Mandarins’ (read ‘Babus’) have over estimated their influence with America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby which harbors deep suspicions about India's traditional ‘double-speak’, ‘double-faced’, Chanakyan (read Machiavellian) foreign policy. The pro-Israel lobby wants to make its’ support for the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal conditional upon tangible changes in India's position on Iran, Palestine-Israel and Non-Alignment. That was the substance of Indian Foreign Secretary Saran's discussions, on his latest trip, with Rep Tom Lantos, (Democrat-12th-CA) a well-read, pro-Israel, senior Congressman, who wants India to sever its relations with Iran, and who protested against a recent visit by two Iranian naval ships to Kochi. Congressman Tom Lantos has not yet mentioned - or perhaps is not aware - about India’s nuclear proliferation to Iran in the past (see our column dated 27 October, 2004, headlined, “India’s Nuclear proliferation to Iran: Affaire de Dr. Y. S. R. Prasad”: www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2004/october27.aspx) or the presence of hundreds of Indian ‘coolie-technicians’ who are currently employed in Iran to secretly help maintain Iran’s Russian made submarines and other sophisticated military equipment. The pro-Israel lobby, however, has made it known - loud and clear - that it would also like India to have no truck with the Hamas-dominated government, just elected in Palestine, if it wants their support in the US congress. Congressman Lantos ought to read SPACE WAR report, dated 23 October 2003, headlined, “Top Indian Nuclear expert helped Iran develop Nuclear plant” at: www.spacewar.com/2003/031023051623.vbyeqa4o.html
The influential and rabidly anti-Castro Cuban-American lobby too, has also made it known that it wants India to disassociate itself from the Non-Aligned Movement whose next summit is due in Havana if it wants their support on the Hill. In short these lobbies would like to hold India's feet to the fire to test the claim that New Delhi is indeed becoming one of America's closest and most reliable ally and a counterweight to China, Cuba, Iran and the Palestinian nationhood movement. Needless to say, this will involve severe erosion of India's foreign policy options on several issues. Indian policy-makers, as one well known Indian columnist put it, “had probably not reckoned that 'strategic partnership' with the US would extract such a hefty price.”
Another factor which looms over discussions in political circles, in Washington DC, is the Bush administration's secretive approach while negotiating the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal with India in which the foreign-affairs bureaucracy, influential Congressmen, White House staff or government nuclear specialists were not consulted. A report in the Washington Post documents how Bush and Rice unilaterally initiated what it called a 'revolution in US nuclear policy and relations with India' while bypassing key decision-makers. Their close circle of advisers favored a ''big bang'' approach towards India over an ‘incremental’ one. This was a major policy shift, comparable for many to President Nixon's decision to open relations with China against the former USSR. But unlike then, there were no secret discussions within top US policy circles. With their 'big bang' approach, President Bush and Secretary Rice overruled their nuclear specialists, who wanted the deal to limit India's nuclear weapons potential and place all of its power reactors under safeguards. But India played hardball. It only agreed to safeguard 14 out of 22 power reactors and secured exemption for fast-breeders and military-nuclear facilities. A senior US official is quoted as saying 'the Indians were incredibly greedy… They were getting 99 per cent of what they asked for and still they pushed for 100.' This has created great resentment in Washington. A report in the Washington Post of April 03, 2006, headlined, “India Nuclear Deal May Face Hard Sell,” which is quite revealing, can be read by clicking at: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040201315.html
Any ‘peaceful / civilian’ nuclear proliferation (and this agreement is an unprecedented nuclear proliferation at a grand scale no matter how you see it) is of great interest and concern to the 25 million Sikhs (3 million FREE and prospering in the diaspora and 22 million captive behind India’s 'Berlin Wall') as our homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, is located smack in the middle of nuclear-armed India, China and Pakistan and we will be the first to get wiped out in any Indo/ Pak ‘exchange of blows’ in a nuclear altercation or for that matter any Indo/ Chinese nuclear ‘brawl’ in the future. Like in the past, India’s historical rival, Pakistan, is not going to just ‘twiddle its fingers’ in the face of Indian attempts at nuclear hegemony specially when weather patterns and geography favor Pakistan in a nuclear scenario on the subcontinent. One can safely predict a future nuclear arms race, a ‘Pandora’s box’ 9as President Jimmy Carter has called it) opening East and West of the Sikh Homeland of Punjab. It therefore, behooves every Sikh in general, and American Sikhs in particular, to vigorously lobby against this ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal with their Congressmen/Senators and expose the illegal activity (bribery) the Indian embassy may be planning in Washington DC, just as it did in the past when it got caught bribing US Congressmen..
As we have pointed out in this column many times in the past:www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2006/march01.aspx
www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2004/october06.aspx
www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2004/february11.aspx
that a nuclear arms race/war in South Asia (or even a conventional war) pose a grave danger to the safety of the Punjab, (the Homeland of the world’s 25 million Sikhs currently occupied by the armed forces of the ‘Brahmin/ Bania Mad Bombers’ in Delhi) sandwiched as the Sikh Homeland is, between warring India and Pakistan. ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ Indo/US deal or no deal the world community in general, and the US in particular, must force the Indian rulers to shed their nuclear delusions so that Delhi can put an end to nuclear proliferation activities of hundreds of Indian coolie/ scientists/ technicians in Iran, Brazil and God knows where else.
In the meantime, we Sikhs must invigorate our struggle for an independent, democratic buffer state of Khalistan, which will separate India from Pakistan and will stretch from the Jumna River on the East to the Pakistan border in the West, to Kashmir in the North and China on the North East. We Sikhs have no choice if we want to survive. We MUST do what we MUST, and lobbying against ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal is one effort we must do right now if we want to survive as a nation and protect our holy shrines and our people. The emergence of the buffer state of Khalistan (a fertile, river-water-agriculture rich, bridge of commerce between South and Central Asia) will not only bring unprecedented prosperity to the Sikh Homeland, but will also usher in peace and happiness to South Asia, by permanently separating the two perennially warring nuclear-armed, dirt-poor, over-populated states of India and Pakistan. Ultimately Khalistan will act as a bridge of commerce between South and Central Asia and beyond.