Page 378 - SSB Interview: The Complete Guide, Second Edition

opposed to what the Indian Parliament was led to expect from the agreement.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in Parliament is totally at
variance with the Bush Administration’s communication to the House

Foreign Affairs Committee, which said India would not be allowed to
stockpile such nuclear fuel stocks as to undercut American leverage to re-
impose sanctions. To drive home this point, it said the 123 Agreement is not
inconsistent with the Hyde Act’s stipulation — the little-known ‘Barack

Obama Amendment’ — that the supply of nuclear fuel should be
“commensurate with reasonable operating requirements”. The ‘strategic

reserve’ that is crucial to India’s nuclear programme is, therefore, a non-
starter. Furthermore, the agreement, as a result of its compliance with the
Hyde Act, contained a direct linkage between shutting down US nuclear trade
with India and any potential future Indian nuclear weapons test, a point that

was factually inconsistent with explicit reassurances made on this subject by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the final parliamentary debate on

the nuclear deal. As Professor Brahma Chellaney, an expert in strategic
affairs and one of the authors of the Indian Nuclear Doctrine, explained:

While the Hyde Act’s bar on Indian testing is explicit, the one in the NSG

waiver is implicit, yet unmistakable. The NSG waiver is overtly anchored in
NSG Guidelines Paragraph 16, which deals with the consequence of “an
explosion of a nuclear device”. The waiver’s Section 3(e) refers to this key

paragraph, which allows a supplier to call for a special NSG meeting, and
seek termination of cooperation, in the event of a test or any other “violation
of a supplier-recipient understanding”. The recently-leaked Bush

administration letter to Congress has cited how this Paragraph 16 rule will
effectively bind India to the Hyde Act’s conditions on the pain of a US-
sponsored cut-off of all multilateral cooperation. India will not be able to

escape from the US-set conditions by turning to other suppliers.

Indian Parliament Vote

On 9 July 2008, India formally submitted the safeguards agreement to the
IAEA. This development came after the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan