Leading American political commentator Pat Buchanan ridicules the ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ Indo/US deal
Every Sikh must oppose this ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal as Indo/Pak Nuclear arms pose a grave danger to the very existence of the Sikh Homeland
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, March 29, 2006 - LeadingThe most telling comment on the proposed Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement (disapproved by most Sikhs and approved by President George Bush and India’s ‘Sonia appointed’ Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi this month) was made by the well known American political commentator and one-time conservative presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan, when he named it the ‘nukes for mangoes’ deal. Pat Buchanan is reported to have said that, “the US negotiators capitulated to all of India’s demands, lest Bush leave New Delhi with nothing to show for the trip halfway around the world but an agreement to import mangoes.”
While the Indian Embassy in Washington DC has embarked on an illegal course by trying to mobilize the American-Indian-Hindu community to rally support on the Hill for changes to US laws in support of the Indo-US nuclear deal, the ‘Nukes for Mangoes Agreement’ has received a significant setback from the international community. According to a Washington-datelined report in the Calcutta English language newspaper, TELEGRAPH, sent by its correspondent, K. P. Nayar, published in the March 25, 2006, issue of the newspaper, “Two American diplomats sent by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Vienna to plead Delhi’s case for rule change at the Nuclear Suppliers Group are returning empty-handed after the NSG turned down a US proposal to put the deal on the agenda for the group’s plenary meeting in May. All is not lost, however. Diplomats here said the Bush administration will make another bid before May to get the India deal on the NSG agenda for the plenary in Rio de Janeiro. Japan and Australia were two countries that blocked a consensus at this week’s NSG meeting to put the deal on the agenda for the group’s next plenary. Other opponents at the NSG, which controls the global trade in nuclear technology and equipment, include the Netherlands, Norway, Argentina and Sweden.”
Mr. K.P. Nayar for obvious partisan reasons forgot to mention the opposition to the ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal by some thirty members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group like Germany, China, Turkey, Belgium et al. Only the major arms-exporting, ‘merchants-of-death’, countries, (who have a record of Nuclear proliferation in the past, like U.K. for example: www.thehindu.com/2006/03/11/stories/2006031103751400.htm) Russia, Britain and France have issued statements in support of the ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal as they see a chance of selling more arms and nuclear reactors to the rulers of dirt poor India. Rest of the members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), established in 1975, and comprising 44 nuclear supplier states, (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have great misgivings and have offered no support in this brazen effort to destroy the successful international Nuclear Non-proliferation regime. A nonproliferation regime which in the past decades saw the successful nuclear disarming of South Africa, Kazakistan & Ukraine and kept the nuclear ambitions of Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Egypt, Taiwan, South Korea, Iran and others in check.
K. P. Nayar the Telegraph’s pompous, know-it-all Washington correspondent has given a bird’s eye view of what is going on when he reported that a mobilization of American-Indian-Hindus (the million strong Sikh and Muslim communities of Indian origin want to play no part in the illegal activity) will continue through the weekend when Indian ambassador Sen’s deputy Raminder Singh Jassal will brief a larger group consisting of leaders of influential ethnic Indian organizations, who have arrived here (in Washington DC) as part of this huge mobilization organized by the Indian Embassy. To understand what this ‘illegal & undiplomatic’ activity by the Indian Embassy entails it would be worthwhile to read Nayar’s earlier dispatch – full of chutzpah - in the Telegraph newspaper of March 22, 2006, headlined, “PAYBACK POLICY - The price of getting the nuclear deal cleared by the US Congress.” (www.telegraphindia.com/1060322/asp/opinion/story_5994779.asp) Telegraph newspaper’s Washington correspondent K. P. Nayar had the shameless audacity to suggest - or was he airing the opinion of Indian diplomats in Washington DC - in this Telegraph report, and we quote him verbatim, that, “The US Congress is arguably one of the most corrupt institutions in the world, far more decadent than other similar bodies made up of politicians in the third world, which is often accused of corruption. In an election year such as this, the capacity of the Congress to wallow in corruption reaches phenomenal depths. If India wants the nuclear deal to go through in the Congress in an election year, New Delhi will have to buy US legislators one by one. Indian American Republicans and their counterparts among Democrats have privately calculated that this deal will cost the ethnic Indian community in America at least $8 million in election contributions to candidates to the Congress this year from both parties. But others believe that figure is an understatement and that it will cost many times more.” End of quote.
In view of the Telegraph newspaper report perhaps Pat Buchanan’s description of this deal as ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ should be updated, in light of the covert illegal activity of Indian diplomats in Washington DC to ‘Bribes for Nukes’ deal. Notwithstanding the Telegraph’s suggestion of using bribery to lobby American law-makers the ‘wind direction’ is changing fast in Washington on the ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ US/India deal and honest U.S. lawmakers have started to publicly trash the agreement. The latest negative expression has been publicly aired (in an Opinion piece in the prestigious Boston Globe, last Monday, on March 27, 2006) by none other than the powerful Co-chairman of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation on the Hill, Congressman Edward Markey, a senior Democratic party law-maker who has represented Malden, Massachusetts, (D-7th-MA) in the US House of Representatives since 1976. In his Boston Globe article headlined, ‘No exemption for India on nuclear treaty,’ Congressman Edward Markey wrote that, “President Bush’s zeal for promoting global commercial deals at the expense of national security -- apparent in the Dubai ports fiasco -- has now led him to propose a huge loophole in international law for India that threatens the world. In the deal, the United States would join India to blow a hole in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, shaking the foundation of international cooperation to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The same president who warned that the United States must not send mixed signals to the world is fast becoming confusion's favorite semaphore. India is the world's largest democracy, but it is also a nuclear outlier. It has steadfastly refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, refused to accept full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards over all of its nuclear facilities diverted peaceful technology into several nuclear weapons, and continued to build a nuclear arsenal.” (To read Congressman Markey’s March 27 Boston Globe Op-Ed in detail click at: www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/27/no_exemption_for_india_on_nuclear_treaty?mode=PF)
Congressman Edward Markey goes on to say in the above mentioned March 27 Boston Globe article that, “Under existing US law or under international law, India has disqualified itself from full civil nuclear cooperation. Bush has now decided to try to override US law and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to accommodate India's defiance. But he is unleashing a dangerous new dynamic in an unstable world. Granting India a special exemption from the non-proliferation rules sets the table for a nuclear weapons banquet that could include a large group of unwanted guests. Russia may seek special exemptions from the nuclear rules to share nuclear materials with Iran. China will have a free pass to grant special exemptions for Pakistan or North Korea. The solution for a lasting alliance with India will not be achieved by blowing a hole in the nonproliferation treaty... unleashing a nuclear Pandora's Box.” Indeed!
We feel that Congressman Edward Markey is right on the button. A world without the constraints of a fair and viable Nuclear non-proliferation regime will be a very unsafe place indeed. If this Indo/US ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal goes through which will make an exception for India, can it guarantee that there won’t be other exceptions for Taiwan, Israel, Japan, South Korea. If dirt poor India and Pakistan (also South Africa and Israel) could acquire nuclear weapons in the ‘sanctioned’ atmosphere of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s who and what is going to stop some wealthy oil-rich Islamic country from buying nuclear weapons when oil is heading ‘North’ in the direction of US$. 100 a barrel and there are hundreds of billions of dollars floating around. Therefore, this is the time to strengthen the international Non-proliferation regime, not weaken it, as this ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ Indo/US deal will do if the US Law-makers on the Hill put an OK on it.
The outcome of this Indo/US ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ drama effects the very survival of the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, in South Asia, located as it is, smack in the middle of nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. 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’ 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) as has been suggested by the Calcutta-based Indian newspaper, Telegraph on March 22, 2006.
As we have pointed out in this column many times in the past (www.khalistan-affairs.org/home/khalistancalling/2006/march01.aspx) a nuclear arms race/war (or even a conventional war) pose a grave danger to the safety of the Punjab Homeland of the world’s 25 million Sikhs (22 million captive in India and 3 million free in the diaspora) sandwiched as the Sikh Homeland is, between warring India and Pakistan. Therefore, we Sikhs must invigorate our struggle for an independent, democratic buffer state of Khalistan stretching 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. We MUST do that 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 and acting as a bridge of commerce between South and Central Asia and beyond. Currently it takes three weeks to export any commodity from Amritsar to Kabul, Afghanistan. With Khalistan on the world map it will take less than twenty four hours. Khalistanis must therefore, also strive for a twenty mile strip of land running East, and parallel, to the present Indo/Pakistan border right down to the historical Sikh shrine, at Lakhpat, on the Arabian Sea. American political commentator Pat Buchanan ridicules the ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ Indo/US deal