Ndeal: India's sovereignty not at stake: Cong

As the Government pushed the accelerator on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, the Left and BJP cried foul again.

The Centre on Thursday made public the draft Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that has been forwarded to its Board of Governors for consideration.

The Board, which is scheduled to meet on July 28 on an unrelated matter, could take up India's draft for approval.

However, the Left said the deal is a betrayal to the Common Minimum Programme while the BJP said the Government is practicing deceit.

UPA may have outmaneuvered its opponents for the moment but it still has to prove in Parliament that it is a majority government. The question of the day that was being asked on the CNN-IBN show, Face The Nation was: IAEA text revealed – is the PM guilty of deceit over the Safeguards Agreement?

The panel of experts included Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal; BJP Spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy; and CPI-M MP Mohammad Salim.

Politics of Deceit

In August 2007 the UPA had shared the 123 agreement text with the Left, so then what was in the safeguards agreement that the party could not share it with the comrades?

Opening the debate, Sibal said, "We circulated the text to the Board of Governors or rather the IAEA circulated it, because it is not for us to do it, on July 9 and not before that. It was available on the website of the MEA on July 10 for the public. Before that process started it was a classified document."

"Also let us be clear on what happened with the Left too. I was a member of the UPA-Left committee. They never said that they wanted to see the draft. We told them that it was not possible to see the draft because it can be shared only after it goes to the Board of Governors. And they never objected. They just said how will we get to know and we had said that we will explain and so we did," Sibal added.

Responding to Sibal's argument, Salim said that this is what happenned "when a good advocate took a bad case".

"In November, the agreement was that they will not go ahead or freeze the draft. Secondly, when the last meeting was held, we said that we cannot agree to an agreement without seeing the documents. They said they could not show us the documents that time and now we see that both the 'technical' and the 'classified' documents are free for all," Salim said.

But it seems that the Left has been outmaneuvered. When they were shown the 123 Agreement they made objections, finally saying that the deal was not good. So the question that naturally arisies is - why should the Government be obligated to show the CPM the text of the 123 Agreement when the party's basic position has been all along that they don't want the deal?

"The draft of 123 never came to light before the final signature. Everything was behind the scene. Even Cabinet Ministers were not shown and we talk of democracy," Salim said, defending his party.

So, the Left's objections, it seemed, were ideological. However, the BJP that started the process of getting close to the US now seems to be engaging in political gimmickry and saying that the Prime Minister was engaging in deceit.

"At no point of time has the BJP said that it is against any strategic relationship with the US. We have explicitly mentioned that the only aspect which is a matter of concern is that the Nuclear Strategic Weapons Programme would get hampered," Rudy said.

He added, "Why we termed it 'deceit' is the very fact that the Government has become a minority. And all this is because of the Safeguards Agreement. Now there are senior ministers in the Government who say unless they have the mandate, they will not go ahead. But in the midnight the country suddenly comes to know that the agreement has already been sent to the IAEA Board."

However, Sibal said that Rudi "didn't know the facts".

"Before the circulation by the IAEA itself, the draft cannot be revealed to anybody because under the convention, you can only show the documents if they are declassified," Sibal explained.

Refuting charges that the Congress didn't want to show the draft to the Left, Sibal added, "Mr Pranab Mukherjee categorically told them (Left) that you can be shown the documents only if you are a part of the Government. There are no tactics here. It's a rule and we only shared it when the IAEA circulated it."

However, Rudy argued that the IAEA Secretariat had said that that though the documents were restricted, if the country so desired, then they could have been shown. "Basically all this is just a coverup for the Government's actions," he said.

Chain Reaction

As the debate gathered steam, experts on the show spoke about the apprehension that was being voiced by scientists as well as the viewers who were tuned in on what would happen if the fuel supply for nuclear reactors was cut off for some reason? Would India be able to take corrective measures to restore fuel supply then?

"First of all, we will never be totally dependant on anybody. The procedure is we go to IAEA, get the approval of the Board of Governors, then it goes to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, the US Congress, then the 123 is agreed upon. After that we come back to the IAEA, then we give a declaration of the nuclear reactor, identify which reactors will be put under safeguards and finally we have to be satisfied that our fuel supply will be consistent. Then it is operationalised. So nothing is lost. Also, we can go to other countries like Canada and Australia to sign separate agreements on fuel supply. We don't have to go to the US. So one country stops supplies then we can go to another country," Sibal explained.

Hence it goes that only when the deal is through and the Government is satisfied, that the country can sign the Safeguards Agreement.

However, an unimpressed Rudy asked, "What was the hurry to take it to the IAEA when your own Government was falling?"

Sibal replied, "I don't know why is he asking all this. Even if the Government has lost majority, nothing really has happened. There is nothing lost by going forward. We are gaining time. In case we win the vote of confidence, it is good, but in case we don't, there is still no problem because then whichever Government is in power it will decide what it has to do."

But Salim asked, "What is the priority of the Government, what is the hurry? Why has this Government become a one-point programme?"

Closing the debate Sibal said, "The safeguards will be in perpetuity once we make a declaration. Going to the Board of Governors is not putting our safeguards in perpetuity. Nothing has happened to put India's sovereignty at stake."

Final results of the SMS poll: IAEA text revealed – is the PM guilty of deceit over the Safeguards Agreement?

62 per cent – No

38 per cent - Yes

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