India’s Generation of Children Crippled by Uranium Waste

Published on Sunday, August 30, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations

by Gethin Chamberlain

Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country’s borders.

 

Gurpreet Sigh, 7, who has cerebral palsy and microcephaly, and is from Sirsar, 50km from the Punjabi town of Bathinda. He is being treated at the Baba Farid centre for Special Children in Bathinda Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain.

Some sit mutely, staring into space, lost in a world of their own; others cry out, rocking backwards and forwards. Few have any real control over their own bodies. Their anxious parents fret over them, murmuring soft words of encouragement, hoping for some sort of miracle that will free them from a nightmare. 

Health workers in the Punjabi cities of Bathinda and Faridkot knew something was terribly wrong when they saw a sharp increase in the number of birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers. They suspected that children were being slowly poisoned.

But it was only when a visiting scientist arranged for tests to be carried out at a German laboratory that the true nature of their plight became clear. The results were unequivocal. The children had massive levels of uranium in their bodies, in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.

The results were both momentous and mysterious. Uranium occurs naturally throughout the world, but is normally only present in low background levels which pose no threat to human health. There was no obvious source in the Punjab that could account for such high levels of contamination.

And if a few hundred children – spread over a large area – were contaminated, how many thousands more might also be affected? Those are questions the Indian authorities appear determined not to answer. Staff at the clinics say they were visited and threatened with closure if they spoke out. The South African scientist whose curiosity exposed the scandal says she has been warned by the authorities that she may not be allowed back into the country.

But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region’s coal-fired power stations. It is already known that the fine fly ash produced when coal is burned contains concentrated levels of uranium and a new report published by Russia’s leading nuclear research institution warns of an increased radiation hazard to people living near coal-fired thermal power stations.

The test results for children born and living in areas around the state’s power stations show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Tests on ground water show that levels of uranium around the plants are up to 15 times the World Health Organisation’s maximum safe limits. Tests also show that it extends across large parts of the state, which is home to 24 million people.

The findings have implications not only for the rest of India – Punjab produces two-thirds of the wheat in the country’s central reserves and 40% of its rice – but for many other countries planning to build new power plants, including China, Russia, India, Germany and the US. In Britain, there are plans for a coal-fired station at the Kingsnorth facility in Kent.

The victims are being treated at the Baba Farid centres for special children in Bathinda – where there are two coal-fired thermal plants – and in nearby Faridkot. It was staff at those clinics who first voiced concerns about the increasing numbers of admissions involving severely handicapped children. They were being born with hydrocephaly, microcephaly, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome and other complications. Several have already died.

Dr Pritpal Singh, who runs the Faridkot clinic, said the numbers of children affected by the pollution had risen dramatically in the past six or seven years. But he added that the Indian authorities appeared determined to bury the scandal. “They can’t just detoxify these kids, they have to detoxify the whole Punjab. That is the reason for their reluctance,” he said. “They threatened us and said if we didn’t stop commenting on what’s happening, they would close our clinic.

“But I decided that if I kept silent it would go on for years and no one would do anything about it. If I keep silent then the next day it will be my child. The children are dying in front of me.”

Dr Carin Smit, the South African clinical metal toxicologist who arranged for the tests to be carried out in Germany, said that the situation could no longer be ignored. “There is evidence of harm for these children in my care and… it is an imperative that their bodies be cleaned up and their metabolisms be supported to deal with such a devastating presence of radioactive material,” she said.

“If the contamination is as widespread as it would appear to be – as far west as Muktsar on the Pakistani border, and as far east as the foothills of Himachal Pradesh – then millions are at high risk and every new baby born to a contaminated mother is at risk.”

In the Faridkot centre last week, Harmanbir Kaur, 15, was rocking gently backwards and forwards. When her test results came back, they showed she had 10 times the safe limit of uranium in her body. Her brother, Naunihal Singh, six, has double the safe level.

Harmanbir was born in Muktsar, 25 miles from Faridkot. Her mother, Kulbir Kaur, 37, watched her slowly degenerate from a healthy baby into the girl she is today, dribbling constantly, unable to feed herself, lost in a world of her own. “God knows what sin I have committed. When we go to our village people say there is a curse of God on you, but I don’t believe so,” she said. “Every part of this area is affected. We never imagined that there would be uranium in our kids.”

A few miles down the road in Bathinda, Sukhminder Singh, 48, a farmer, watched his son Kulwinder, 13, staring into space while curling his hands up under his chin. Tests showed Kulwinder has 19 times the maximum safe level of uranium in his body. He has cerebral palsy and has already had seven operations to unbend his arms and legs.

“The government should investigate it because if our child is affected it will also affect future generations,” he said. “What are they waiting for? How many children do they want to be affected? Another generation? I can leave the house for work, but my wife is always with him. Sometimes she cries and asks why God is playing with our luck. Every morning he sends a new trouble.”

Doni Choudhary, aged 15 months, is waiting to be tested, though staff say he shows similar symptoms to those who have tested positive and are treating him for suspected uranium poisoning. His mother, Neelum, 22, from the state capital, Chandigarh, says he was born with hydrocephaly. His legs are useless.

“He is dependent on others. After me, who can care for him?” Neelum asks. “He tries to speak but he can’t express himself and my heart cries. When will he understand that his legs don’t work? What will he feel?”

India’s reluctance to acknowledge the problem is hardly unexpected: the country is heavily committed to an expansion of thermal plants in Punjab and other states. Neither was it any surprise when a team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy visited the area and concluded that while the concentration of uranium in drinking water was “slightly high”, there was “nothing to worry” about. Yet some tests recorded levels of uranium in the ground water as high as 224mcg/l (micrograms per litre) – 15 times higher than the safe level of 15mcg/l recommended by the WHO. (The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum safe level of 20mcg/l.)

Some scientists have proposed that the ground water may have been contaminated by contact with granite rocks that rise above the ground about 150 miles away to the south in the Tosham hills, in Haryana state. A continuation of these rocks is believed to run deep below the thick alluvial deposits that form the plains of Punjab.

Increasing demands for water, in particular to irrigate the rice crop, have led to greater dependence on tube wells. That in turn is depleting the water table in the state at an alarming rate – by at least 30cm a year, according to one study – with the result that water is being drawn from ever deeper levels. However, this theory seems to be in conflict with evidence from parents of many of the children, who say they use the mains supply, which comes from other sources.

There have also been claims that the contamination may have been exacerbated by depleted uranium carried on the wind from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a seminar in Amritsar in April, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, a former chief of the naval staff, suggested that areas within a 1,000-mile radius of Kabul – including Punjab – may be affected by depleted uranium. Although the prevailing monsoon winds blow either from the north-east or the south-west, there are times when a depression originating in the Mediterranean can result in rainfall in Punjab.

Meanwhile, smoke continues to pour from the power station chimneys and lorries shuttle backwards and forwards, taking away the fly ash to be mixed into cement at the neighbouring Ambuja factory. Inside the plant last week, there was ash everywhere, forming drifts, clinging to the skin, getting into the throat.

Ravindra Singh, the plant’s security officer, said that most of the ash went to the cement works, while the rest was dumped in ash ponds. It would be more efficient to burn better quality coal that left less ash, he said. Every day the plant burned 6,000 tons of coal. He had no idea how much ash that generated, but the stream of lorries to take it away was continuous.

The first coal-fired power station in Punjab was commissioned in Bathinda in 1974, followed by another in nearby Lehra Mohabat in 1998. There is a third to the east, at Rupnagar.

Tests on ground water in villages in Bathinda district found the highest average concentration of uranium – 56.95mcg/l – in the town of Bucho Mandi, a short distance from the Lehra Mohabat ash pond. Such a concentration of uranium means the lifetime cancer risk in the village was more than 153 times higher than in the normal population. Tests on ground water in the village of Jai Singh Wala, close to the Bathinda ash pond, showed an average level of 52.79mcg/l. People living there said they used the ash to spread on the roads and even on the floors of their homes.

Scientists in Punjab who have studied the presence of uranium in the state have dismissed the government denials as a whitewash. “If the government says there is a high level of uranium in an area that would create havoc – they don’t want to openly say something like that,” said Dr Chander Parkash, a wetland ecologist working at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

Both he and Dr Surinder Singh, who works at the same university and has also carried out tests on the state’s ground water, said it was clear that uranium was present in large quantities and should be investigated further.

Another scientist, Dr GS Dhillon, a former chief engineer with the irrigation department, is convinced that the uranium has come from the power stations and accuses the authorities of failing to control the ash ponds, which he believes have contaminated the ground water.

Their concerns are bolstered by a report from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s leading state organisation for nuclear research, published last month in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Thermal Engineering journal. The report’s author, DA Krylov, raised serious doubts about the safety of coal-fired thermal power stations (TPSs), concluding that radiation from ash residues and from chimney emissions built up around coal-fired power plants and posed an additional risk to those living and working in the area.

“Natural radionuclides contained in coals concentrate in ash-and-slag wastes and gas-aerosol emissions as these coals are fired at TPSs, with the result that an elevated man-made radiation background builds up around TPSs,” the report stated. The situation became worse, the report said, if ash was used as a construction material or as a filling material for roads.

A previous report in the magazine Scientific American, citing various sources, claimed that fly ash emitted by power plants “carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy”, adding: “When coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.”

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Could Saber-Rattling Lead to War between India and Pakistan?

Published on Saturday, December 27, 2008 by McClatchy Newspapers

by Saeed Shah / Jonathan S. Landay

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is moving some troops away from its border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said on Friday, sparking renewed fears that last month’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, could trigger a fourth war between the two countries, both of which are now armed with nuclear weapons.

 

Civilians gather near a barbwire fence at the India-Pakistan border post to watch the beating the retreat ceremony in Wagah, India, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. Pakistan told India on Saturday it did not want war and was committed to fighting terrorism, a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions after Pakistan moved troops toward their shared border.(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Media reports in both countries, most unconfirmed and some false or exaggerated, have fueled rising war hysteria in India and Pakistan, and U.S. officials and independent analysts worry that any signs of preparation for war could trigger a conflict that neither country wants and that neither can afford. 

The Bush administration has been trying to calm the situation, but U.S. officials worry that Pakistan’s weak civilian government can’t meet India’s demands for a crackdown on Islamic militant groups without sparking a backlash from the country’s powerful army and the directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, which have ties to some militant groups.

“We hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times,” said U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert with The Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research organization in Washington who returned on Monday from a visit to India, said the coalition government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh doesn’t want a confrontation, but is under considerable public pressure to retaliate against Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks.

“There is nothing (the Singh government) can do except make threatening noises toward Pakistan,” he said. “Both countries are rattling their sabers. These are two weak governments that are clearly trying to get the Americans nervous so they put pressure on the other country (to back down).”

He called the current atmosphere “a precursor to a crisis” that could erupt because of the high possibility of a misstep on either side.

“We are in a period of touch-and-go,” he said.

For U.S. and NATO troops battling the Taliban and al Qaida, however, any Pakistani withdrawal from the frontier with Afghanistan could be disastrous. Pakistan has some 100,000 troops stationed along the Afghan border, and their departure would give the Taliban and other groups refuge and free reign in an area that sits astride America’s supply lines into Afghanistan.

It wasn’t clear Friday, however, how extensive the Pakistani move away from the Afghan border is.

A Pakistani defense official, who couldn’t be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said: “Troops, in snowbound areas and places where operational commitments were less (in the west), have been pulled back.”

The official, however, denied reports that the soldiers had been redeployed to the Indian border, and he declined to say how many troops were involved. Media reports, quoting witnesses, spoke of long convoys of trucks carrying troops, passing through towns in western Pakistan, traveling eastward, but another security official, who lacked the authorization to speak and couldn’t be named, said that there’d been “no untoward troop movement.”

The objective and magnitude of the Pakistani troop movements are unclear, said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

He said, however, that Pakistan usually pulls troops out of mountainous northwestern areas bordering Afghanistan during the winter, when operations against militants allied with al Qaida usually wind down.

Indian Prime Minister Singh met with his military chiefs on Friday, and there also have been unconfirmed reports in recent days that India has moved troops to Rajasthan, a region that borders Pakistan. Pakistan fears that India might launch an invasion from Rajasthan into Sindh province, aiming to sever the northern and southern halves of Pakistan.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military expert based in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, said that India might be calculating that a move into Sindh wouldn’t trigger a nuclear response from Pakistan, unlike an invasion of Punjab province, the country’s heartland.

“Pakistan and India are at some distance from war, but when troops start moving, any misperception, or any miscalculation, can be dangerous,” Rizvi said.

Pakistan has canceled leave for all its soldiers, and India has told its citizens not to travel to Pakistan. Since the Mumbai attacks, there have been at least four air incursions into Pakistan by Indian fighter jets. Pakistani officials publicly acknowledged two cross-border flights, but dismissed them as inadvertent.

However, a U.S. State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the incursions appeared to be attempts by India to identify gaps in Pakistan’s air defenses by provoking the Pakistani military into turning on radars.

The Indian air incursions were also designed to turn up the pressure on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to keep the investigation into the Mumbai bombings moving, he said.

“The Pakistani investigation is not done, and for every day that it goes on, it raises the potential for a negative outcome,” the official said.

The first U.S. official said that “at this point,” the U.S. continues to believe that the gunmen who staged the Mumbai attacks were affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Army of the Righteous, a Pakistan-based Islamic extremist organization that has links to al Qaida.

New Delhi has angrily blamed “elements from Pakistan” for the assault on Mumbai, hinting that the group had support from a section of Pakistan’s military. Zardari’s government has offered to co-operate, but it says that India hasn’t shared evidence in the case.

Asked whether Pakistani authorities were continuing a crackdown on the group that they launched in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, the second U.S. official said, “It’s really too early to say.”

“What really is going to matter is (Pakistan’s) performance over time,” he said. “In the past, they’ve arrested guys and then released them. The jury is still out.”

Analysts think that India’s military options are limited to targeted air strikes, but those could be counterproductive and would risk starting a full-scale conflict without destroying the extensive jihadist network that’s thought to operate in Pakistan.

“We are at the cusp of war,” said Zafar Hilaly, a retired Pakistani ambassador turned analyst. “I really do think there is a chance. We shouldn’t, by any means, rule out some kind of hostile action on the part of India.”

The Indian government has at times ruled out war, but at others stated that “all options” are open.

“There is not much that Pakistan will or can do to address Indian demands,” said Kamran Bokhari, the head of Middle East analysis at Stratfor, a private U.S. geopolitical intelligence firm. “There are signs from both countries of preparation for war. Unilateral military action on the part of New Delhi appears quite likely.”

Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee said Friday that, “Instead of raising war hysteria, (Pakistan), should address this (militant) problem.”

“We are for peace, not conflict,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters in Lahore. “But if there is any action, we will retaliate.”

Shah, a McClatchy special correspondent, reported from Islamabad. Landay reported from Washington.

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

Hoax Phone Call ‘Almost Took Pakistan to War’

Published on Sunday, December 7, 2008 by The Times Online (UK)

by Jeremy Page

A hoax telephone call almost sparked another war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan at the height of last month’s terror attacks on Mumbai, officials and Western diplomats on both sides of the border said today.

 

Pranab Mukherjee, left, denied making any phone call to President Zardari (AP/AFP/Getty Images)

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, took a telephone call from a man pretending to be Pranab Mukherjee, India’s Foreign Minister, on Friday, November 28, apparently without following the usual verification procedures, they said. 

The hoax caller threatened to take military action against Pakistan in response to the then ongoing Mumbai attacks, which India has since blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), they said.

Mr Zardari responded by placing Pakistan’s air force on high alert and telephoning Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask her to intervene.

But when Dr Rice called Mr Mukherjee, he said that he had not spoken to Mr Zardari and that his last conversation with Shah Mahmood Qureishi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, had been quite civil.

“It’s unbelievable, but true,” said a Western diplomat familiar with the frantic diplomatic exchanges that eventually resolved the misunderstanding.

“It was a little alarming, to say the least.”

The episode – reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr Strangelove – dramatically illustrates how easy it would be for another war to break out between India and Pakistan, even accidentally, following the Mumbai attacks.

The two countries have already fought three since winning independence from Britain in 1947 and almost went to a fourth in 2002 after LeT militants attacked India’s parliament, prompting both sides to mass troops on their common border.

Some officials and analysts fear the hoax may have been part of an elaborate plot to provoke a conflict between India and Pakistan, thereby diverting Pakistani forces away from the fight against Islamist militants near the Afghan border.

No-one on either side believes the call was a joke as people on both sides are acutely aware of the potential for war.

However, it remains unclear who placed the hoax call, from where, and why Mr Zardari’s office appears to have disregarded standard operating procedures.

The two countries agreed as early as 2004 to establish a hotline between their foreign ministers in case of an accidental nuclear launch, but neither side could clarify today whether the link was up and running.

If Mr Mukherjee had wanted to call Pakistani leaders, the standard protocol would have been for him to telephone his counterpart, rather than the President, and to arrange the call through the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, which would tell the Pakistanis which number to expect a call from.

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s Information Minister, issued a statement denying that the usual verification procedures had been bypassed.

She said Mr Zardari had received a “threatening” telephone call from “a verified official phone number of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs”.

She did not say that it was from Mr Mukherjee, but other Pakistani officials insisted that it was.

Mr Mukherjee, however, denied yesterday that the caller was him, saying that India had been informed about the hoax by “friends from third countries”.

“We immediately clarified to those friends, and we also made it clear to the Pakistan authorities, that I had made no such telephone call,” he said.

“It is, however, worrying that a neighbouring state might even consider acting on the basis of such a hoax call, try to give it credibility with other states, and confuse the public by releasing the story in part.

“I can only ascribe this series of events to those in Pakistan, who wish to divert attention from the fact that a terrorist group operating from the Pakistani territory, planned and launched a ghastly attack on Mumbai.”

He did not comment on the allegation that the call came from an official Indian foreign ministry number, but Indian government sources said that was unlikely.

“We’re not living in a day and age when you can just look at the number flashing up in front of you and assume the call is coming from there,” said one Indian official.

India has said it is not considering military action against Pakistan despite mounting political pressure on the government to appear tough on terrorism in the run-up to national elections, due by May.

But Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan’s high commissioner in London, confirmed that Pakistan’s government was bracing for an Indian military strike immediately after the Mumbai attacks.

“There was circumstantial evidence that India was going to make a quick strike against Pakistan to teach her a lesson,” he told the BBC.

“This is what we were told by our friends – that there could possibly be a quick strike at some of the areas they suspect to be the training camps, an air raid or something of that sort.”

 

Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

US Overturns Ban on Nuclear Trade with India

Published on Thursday, October 2, 2008 by Times Online/UK

US Overturns Ban on Nuclear Trade with India

by Rhys Blakely

BOMBAY – The United States yesterday overturned a three-decade ban on the trade of atomic fuel and technology with India, providing President Bush with what may prove his most significant foreign policy victory while in office.

Analysts say the landmark move underscores Washington’s ambitions to champion India as an Asian counterweight to China. India has argued that access to nuclear power is essential to fuel its economic rise.

President Bush said the legislation “will strengthen our global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, protect the environment, create jobs and assist India in meeting its growing energy needs in a responsible manner.”

However, critics have condemned Mr Bush’s unprecedented willingness to supply India with civilian nuclear technology despite the country’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India tested nuclear weapons as recently as 1998 and has refused to rule out doing so again.

The Washington-based Arms Control Association recently called the decision to allow India into the nuclear club “a non-proliferation disaster of historic proportions that will produce harm for decades to come.”

Shrugging off those concerns, the US Senate voted 86-13 to allow India to buy civilian atomic technology, including nuclear fuel and reactors, from American companies.

Mr Bush’s administration had already played a key role in ending India’s status as an international nuclear pariah by pushing the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) to drop its ban on trade with the country last month.

The NSG, a group of 45 nations that legally supply nuclear fuel and technology, was created after India shocked the world by testing its first atomic device in 1974. It had prevented Delhi from importing the nuclear material it says it needs to help to meet rocketing domestic energy demand.

In India, the governing Congress party spokesman Veerappa Moily said: “The nuclear deal is a monumental achievement. It’s a victory of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government.”

Mr Singh had risked a collapse of his government in pushing through the nuclear deal, which his opponents have claimed will make India a geopolitical vassal of the US.

India’s nuclear power requirements are expected to be worth as much as pounds 17 billion over the next 15 years. Most observers expect Russia and France, which this week signed a nuclear trade pact with India, to be the main beneficiaries.

However, several big US arms companies lobbied hard in Washington in favour for the nuclear deal. They hope that closer ties between the countries will help American companies in massive upcoming tenders to supply India with fighter plane and other military equipment.

The Senate’s move came just ahead of an expected trip to India this weekend by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

© 2008 Times Online

US-India Nuclear Deal Passes Major Hurdle

Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 by One World.net

US-India Nuclear Deal Passes Major Hurdle

by Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS – Disarmament groups and peace activists are urging Congress to reject the Bush administration’s plan to send U.S. nuclear technology to India after the proposal gained the assent of an international monitoring body late last week.

An Indian Political party worker holds a placard at a protest against India’s disputed nuclear energy deal with the US, in Mumbai in June. The United States faces a final hurdle in the implemention of a landmark civilian nuclear pact with India — convincing lawmakers that the deal has adequate safeguards as prescribed by US law.
(AFP/File/Sajjad Hussain)”It will undermine the security of the American people and people everywhere, if Congress allows it to go through,” said David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, about the U.S.-India pact on nuclear technology.

On Friday, a global conglomerate of 45 nations that set the nuclear trade rules approved the U.S.-India nuclear deal by accepting New Delhi’s assertion that its nuclear cooperation with the United States was aimed solely at expanding energy production.

But many independent policy analysts in Washington, DC are not as convinced and see the Bush administration’s move as a fatal blow to international efforts aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

“We are concerned about this deal,” said Leanor Tomero of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, an policy think tank on Capitol Hill. “It sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Like many others, Krieger and Tomero think the nuclear pact with India would undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and encourage other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

“[It] risks fueling a regional arms race with Pakistan, complicating negotiations over Iran, and unraveling the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said Robert Gard, chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, about the nuclear technology deal.

At the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting held in Vienna last week, a small group of countries strongly opposed the deal, but eventually failed to sustain their dissent in the wake of intense diplomatic pressure from Washington.

The NSG is an international consortium that is responsible for monitoring and approving nuclear exports worldwide.

The resistance to the deal, according to observers, was led by six like-minded countries — Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland — which stressed that India must accept certain conditions before starting the nuclear trade.

Those conditions would have required India to guarantee that it would not use the deal to expand its nuclear weapons-related activities. In response, top Indian officials assured delegates that their country was fully opposed to nuclear proliferation.

But for critics like Tomero and Krieger, that is hard to believe because, like two other nuclear armed states, Israel and Pakistan, India remains unwilling to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“As one of only three countries that has never signed the NPT and by continuing to refuse to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, India has shunned meaningful nonproliferation commitments,” said Tomero.

“[It] may promote not only a possible arms race between India and Pakistan, but also [between] India and China,” added John Boroughs of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Nuclear Policy, in a recent interview with OneWorld.

In addition to calling for actions against the spread of nuclear weapons, the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty also requires the five declared nuclear powers — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States — to engage in “good-faith negotiations” toward eliminating their nuclear stockpiles.

Analysts see the approval of the U.S.-India nuclear agreement as a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which prohibits the export of technology that could in any way “assist programs in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons.”

The 1998 resolution was adopted with consensus soon after both India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in defiance of international agreement against the spread of nuclear weapons.

Since the 1947 partition when the British ended their colonial rule in the Indian sub-continent, India and Pakistan have gone to war with each other three times. Currently, both countries are in possession of a sizeable arsenal of nuclear weapons.

According to the Uranium Resource Center, India has as many as 14 nuclear energy reactors in commercial operation and 9 under construction. Currently, its nuclear power supplies are estimated to account for about 3 percent of total electricity production.

Though India strongly denies that it intends to use the deal with the United States to expand its nuclear weapons program, its officials have also argued that the deal does not preclude the country from carrying out further nuclear tests.

Critics have described the U.S. acceptance of India’s nuclear weapons program as amounting to ”a major concession” for a country that has refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

But in reflecting on the consequences of the U.S.-India agreement and its approval by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Tomero also held Russia and other major powers responsible for the breach of international rules governing the non-proliferation regime.

“The U.S. nuclear industry has pushed hard for this deal,” she said. “[However], Japan, Russia, and France will also gain from this because they think more nuclear competition is profitable. I think the Congress will have to look at this very carefully.”

Congress to Have Final Say

Observers say they expect the Bush administration will try hard to get the nuclear deal with India approved by Congress before the presidential polls are held in November.

“I think Berman will put on a lot of pressure,” said Tomero, referring to Howard Berman, chairman of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee. In a statement last Monday, Berman made it clear that any final agreement “must be consistent” with the 2006 Hyde Act, which calls for “immediate termination” of all nuclear trade by NSG members if India detonates a nuclear explosive device.

“Congress needs to study the NSG decision, along with any agreements that were made behind the scenes,” said Berman. “If the administration wants to seek special procedures, it will have to show how the NSG decision is consistent with the Hyde Act.”

“The burden of proof,” according to Berman, “is on the Bush administration so that Congress can be assured that what we’re being asked to approve conforms to U.S. law,” he added in a statement.

Meanwhile, peace activists are stepping up their lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill, amid calls for voters to urge their Congressional representatives to take a firm stand against the nuclear trade deal with India.

“It’s time for action,” said Kreiger. “Other countries will be looking at this deal as a model that will serve their own interests as well. If the United States can do it with India, why not China with Pakistan? Or Russia with Iran? Or Pakistan with Syria?”

© 2008 One World