India risks losing its nuclear ally in Washington

Now that Obama has taken the reins from Bush, New Delhi is bracing for the imposition of a rigorous US nonproliferation regime.

NEW DELHI // Barack Obama and his promise of change are music to the ears of most people, but not in India, where George W Bush is sorely missed. Last autumn, Mr Bush helped India lift a three-decade ban on nuclear trade, prompting the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to tell the US president, who left office with only a 22 per cent favourability rating, that India "loved" him. New Delhi's intelligentsia cringed, but Mr Singh was not lying. Unfortunately for India, there is now a new US president who is firmly committed to nuclear nonproliferation. Lifting the nuclear trading ban without a requirement that India sign the Nonproliferation Treaty was controversial, both inside and outside India. Critics complained it rewarded India for developing nuclear weapons on the sly using fissile material provided for civilian purposes. They also objected to India's continuing refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But the ruling Congress Party was jubilant, interpreting the move as a seal of approval for India's nuclear weapons programme. "Without compromising on our weapons programme, without compromising on our fast-breeder reactor programme, without signing the NPT, the CTBT or the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty, India has been able to access the entire spectrum of civil nuclear commerce on very much its own terms," Manish Tiwari of Congress said at the time. It has also sparked a nuclear arms race just as Mr Obama attempts to calm the region, including Afghanistan, where it is fighting a Taliban insurgency. Pakistan has promised to beef up its nuclear arsenal, while Russia and China have reacted badly to India's determination to achieve a US-sponsored ballistic missile defence shield. The Indian deal has also made it much harder for the United States to negotiate effectively with Iran to end its nuclear programme. Some thought that the initiative for the deal came from New Delhi, with its rickety grid and constant power blackouts and brownouts; India has since announced plans for up to 30 nuclear reactors. Some also suggested that the US civilian nuclear industry pushed Mr Bush into it. Others said Mr Bush is solely to blame. "The commercial aspect from the United States' point of view is secondary to the strategic political dimension," said Achin Vanaik, head of the political science department at the University of Delhi. "The initiative for this deal, actually, did come from the Bush administration, not from New Delhi, and it was motivated primarily by the desire to consolidate and deepen the strategic relationship." The Bush administration actively encouraged New Delhi to view itself as a "strategic partner" of the United States, and a counterweight to an emerging China, said M K Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat. "Delhi's priority is to use the deal to provide the context for access to sensitive US military technology within the overall framework of the 'strategic partnership'," Mr Bhadrakumar told Asia Times. The only problem, he said, is that the US-China relationship is established and relatively stable, despite - or perhaps even because of - the financial crisis. "Obama threatens to shake up the daydreamers in Delhi," he said. Mr Obama's commitment to nonproliferation is firm. He has promised to make ratification of the test ban treaty a priority, and has threatened automatic international sanctions on any nation - including India - that refuses to comply with the Nonproliferation Treaty. Mr Obama supported lifting the ban partly because it provides a solution to India's crippling electricity shortage. But he quickly wrote to Mr Singh to clarify that he viewed the deal as a "central element" of US nuclear weapons policy. That means adherence to the test ban treaty, including a total and verifiable production ban on fissile material, as well as much more stringent accounting of all its nuclear material. It is unlikely that New Delhi will go along with this, but given US weakness in the civilian nuclear industry, Washington may not have much to bargain with. "We don't need them," one observer said. "The deal is signed." Mr Singh kept the letter under wraps for weeks, indicating both some unease about Mr Obama, and some concern about the durability of the strong US-India ties that developed under Mr Bush. Mr Bhadrakumar speculates that the "strategic relationship" may have existed less in reality and more in the minds of Mr Bush and Mr Singh. Mr Bush is now gone, and Mr Singh is now absent from office after undergoing heart bypass surgery at the weekend. He was moved out of intensive care at a New Delhi hospital yesterday, the Press Trust of India reported, and is making a "speedy recovery" at the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences, doctors were quoted as saying. Mr Singh's government faces an election before May 15, in which the Hindu nationalist party - the Bharatiya Janata Party - is expected to make a strong showing. The BJP opposes the deal, but only because it thinks it places too many restrictions on India. In the meantime, many energy experts say India is making a mistake investing in outmoded civilian nuclear projects rather than an renewable energy infrastructure that has limited political or environmental effect. * The National