Has India put the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal on the back burner temporarily?

Vociferous Sikh opposition to the deal continues



Washington, D.C., Wednesday, October 24, 2007 - Twenty seven months after the impressive peaceful protest by thousands of Sikh-Americans, outside the White House, which was synchronized with Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s Washington visit to meet with President George W. Bush, when the two inked the US-India nuclear agreement in July 2005,  many signs have begun to emerge from New Delhi that the nuclear accord, which was supposed to herald the end to India's nuclear isolation in the world (and open doors to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council for New Delhi as a recognized nuclear power) may have been put on hold. The crafty Indian rulers seem to be kicking the proverbial Gift Horse in the face! Or, they may have decided to play it down for the time being and plan to ‘operationalize’ the deal come mid-November when a final meeting of a joint panel, ormed by the government and the communist parties, s expected to take place to draft its report. Only time will tell.

Every Indian jingoist (and every peace-loving Punjabi Sikh in Indian occupied Punjab, captive since 1947, behind the barbed-wire ‘Berlin Wall’ on the Attari border, worried about his children’s survival under an Indian/Pakistani radio-active nuclear cloud) is all eyes and ears on the recent noises coming out of Colonial British-built New Delhi. For a backgrounder readers are urged to read this column dated 16 May 2007 headlined, “Is the nuclear ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal going nowhere? Indian mangoes have arrived in the United State!” by clicking at the following link: > /home/khalistancalling/2007/may16.aspx   <  

Since the infamous deal was first agreed upon in July 2005, India's prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and his boss, ‘king-maker’ Signora Sonia Gandy have repeatedly vowed to implement it despite opposition from leftist allies of their United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government. But PM Manmohan Singh appeared to have changed tack over the past week, describing the possible failure of the deal as ‘not the end of life’. He also telephoned US President George W Bush, on October 15th, to plead that domestic opposition was preventing the "operationalization" of the accord. More specifically, India looks increasingly likely, under pressure from the left parties, to scrap or delay negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency that must take place before the deal can be implemented. Before this deal really goes through, there are many issues that need to be resolved: IAEA safeguards, Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) clearance and so on. But before the Manmohan government goes whole hog about allaying NSG's fears on nuclear proliferation, he has to put his own house in order, what with snap poll staring the Government in the face, courtesy Left and an overzealous Opposition

Since late August 2007, when India's leftist parties first explicitly threatened to stop supporting the government if the deal was finalized, the Manmohan Singh led ruling UPA coalition in India (depending for dear life on parliamentary support from Communist parties) has faced the choice of backing down or facing early elections. This naturally has presented the Manmohan Singh government with an uncomfortable dilemma – the young effeminate pretender to the Indian Prime minister’s ‘throne’ Sonia Gandy’s ‘not-too-bright’ 37-years old bachelor son, Signore Rahul Gandy who has just been appointed General Secretary of the Congress party, is not yet ready to play a major role in a national election like his father and grandmother did before mounting the Indian Prime minister’s ‘throne’. For Indian business houses, according to Indian media, the main fear is that a new government would throw a spanner in the works by ‘revisiting’ existing policies under India's Eleventh Five-year Plan (2007-12). These include important infrastructure initiatives such as the ‘Ultra-Mega Power Projects’, airport modernization, a rural electricity program and the planned Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor. Other concerns include the possible shelving of the government's plan to introduce a new, simplified income-tax code by 2008, and to align indirect taxation under a single goods and services tax by 2010.

More than the above, putting off the deal would postpone its obvious benefits to energy-starved India in terms of improved nuclear power-generation capacity. By lifting a 30-year US ban on sales of nuclear fuel and reactors to India, the deal (named the ‘nukes-for-mangoes deal’ by that great American columnist and TV personality Pat Buchannon) has been touted as a key step in easing one of the main infrastructure bottlenecks in India's economic development, if one were not to mention Indian negotiator’s unpatriotic ‘double-faced’ delaying tactics on the Iran-Pakistan-India natural Gas pipeline proposal under discussion with Tehran since 1995 which could solve India’s long term energy problems. Less tangibly, the agreement with the US has also been conceived as part of a broader ‘strategic partnership’ with India's most important trading partner - United States - and was designed to foster closer political ties between the United States and India while strengthening their commercial relationship specially in the field of armaments like fighter planes. Reneging on the US-India nuclear deal at this point in time (as the British media has pointed out) would also seriously damage the Indian government's international credibility as an emerging regional power.

According to a New Delhi datelined report, posted on the Rediff.com website yesterday 23 October 2007 Sheela Bhatt writes  (>  http://www.rediff.com//news/2007/oct/23spec.htm <) that, “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is unlikely to resign. He will do everything possible to push through the (India-United States civil nuclear) deal even now. If he had wanted to resign, he would have done it on September 9 or 10, when (Communist Party of India leader) Prakash Karat met Senora Sonia Gandy and read out the riot act when he clearly told her that the Left parties will withdraw their support in no time if the government went ahead with the negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Nuclear Suppliers Group. This is what a non-Congress cabinet colleague of Dr Singh said on Monday, a day when the government came out in the open and said the deal is on hold till the next government-Left committee meeting on 16 November 2007.”

The three million strong Sikh diaspora (which includes half a million Sikh/Americans in the United States) is still working with the American non-proliferation lobby and is hoping that  the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal in its presenr form falls through if it does not curtail nuclear weaponization. Sikh-Americans fear for their 22 million Sikh compatriots captive in India, living dangerously and unhappily in their South Asian homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, which is sandwiched between two angry nuclear armed rivals, India and Pakistan. As a result the Sikhs have been demanding a nuclear free South Asia and hope the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal goes away as it is a question of survival of the Sikh people and their historic holy shrines located in both India and Pakistan. The Sikhs want a South Asia free of missiles and Nuclear weapons and nuclear tests – they want peace in order to survive. That is why the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center made a heroic effort in November/December last year to lobby against the U.S.-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal. (Read Khalistan Calling dated 15 November 2006 headlined, “Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center launches advocacy campaign to educate U.S. Law makers against the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal,” by clicking at the following link: >  /home/khalistancalling/2006/november15.aspx   < Also read Khalistan Calling of 13 December 2006, headlined, “Musings on the U.S.-India ‘Nuke-for-Mangoes’ deal passed by the U.S. Congress on Dec. 9, 2006” at: >  http://khalistan-affairs.org/home/khalistancalling/2006/december13.aspx  <

The half million strong Sikh-American community senses grave dangers in the current situation, where India and Pakistan, have nuclear missiles pointed at each other with the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, (with its 22 million Sikhs and numerous holy shrines) sandwiched as it is, between the two. The  November 2006 advocacy appeal to U.S. Law Makers by the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center, repeatedly published in the Washington Times newspaper, against the Indo/U.S. ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal is appended below as it remains as relevant and valid today as it was then:-

 

Appeal to all U.S. Law-makers

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Do Not Approve US-India nuclear deal

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An Appeal from 25 million Sikhs 

 

Honorable Law-makers:

The world’s 25 million strong Sikh nation has a hard time believing the alarming media reports that  Senate Foreign Relations Committee is willing to approve, in the lame duck session, the US-India nuclear deal, under section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, without making it conditional on an end to fissile material production by India.

1. Apart from the fissile material issue, how is it possible that worldly wise and well-informed U.S. Law makers are planning to give a ‘wink and a nod’ to the U.S. nuclear deal with India without any powers of oversight in terms of requiring the usual annual certification of Indian good behavior? What if India tests a thermo-nuclear device, sometime in the future, at its’ Test site, which is being kept ready near Pokharan in Rajasthan, and repeats what it did in 1974, by pilfering from its safeguarded civilian nuclear reactors provided by the U.S. and Canada?

2. The latest U.N. Human Development Report-2006, released last week, reveals (Table 21; Energy:> http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf <) that India’s electricity consumption demand projection – the raison d`etre for the deal – is 594 Kilowatt hours per capita – a paltry increase of 421 Kilowatt hours per capita in twenty three years. Electricity demand per capita in India (where over seven hundred million human beings have no access to clean water and sanitation – no latrines) is increasing at a snail’s pace as compared to the galloping demand in countries like S. Korea (7,338 Kilowatt hours per capita), Saudi Arabia (6,749), South Africa (4,595),  Malaysia (3,196), Argentina (2,543), Brazil (2,246), Mexico (2,108), Turkey (1,979), Thailand (1,896), Egypt (1,340) Algeria (929) and others. These countries having all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT was also ratified and proclaimed by the U.S. on March 5, 1970) have a far stronger argument for a nuclear cooperation deal, to meet their energy needs, than hegemonic, dirt-poor, brittle, caste-ridden India, at war with its minorities and sinking under the weight of a thousand mutinies. India has not signed the NPT because its’ hallucinative rulers have always treated the treaty with contempt. The three million strong Sikh diaspora (including half a million Sikhs in the United States) fear for the 22 million Sikhs captive in India, living dangerously and unhappily in their homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, which is sandwiched between two nuclear armed rivals, India and Pakistan. Sikhs demand a nuclear free South Asia. It is a question of survival of our people and our historic holy shrines located in both India and Pakistan.

3. Ladies and Gentlemen, please DO NOT approve the U.S.-India Nuclear deal. Even Republican columnist, author and TV personality, Pat Buchanan, has rightly described it as a ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal about which, he says, the U.S. has, “traded a horse for a rabbit, and some of us are wondering as to the whereabouts of the rabbit.”

Khalistan Affairs Center
956-National Press Building
Washington DC 20045 USA