From the very beginning, the Indo-US nuclear deal has been embroiled in controversies, charges and counter-charges, debates over the issues of national security and provocations directly or indirectly from interested power centers abroad. The India-US joint statement on the deal and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement to Parliament in 2005 was certainly not clear enough for the people to comprehend clearly how much was being given away and what was being received in return. Questions were raised not only among the retired community of nuclear scientists in India, but also among those serving. Trying to get around the opacity surrounding the deal from July 2005, many questions arose.
While the government in India kept things under a wrap, the Americans began leaking elements of the agreement to their hardliner non-proliferation lobby which was determined to ensure by some means that India was forced to roll back its nuclear weapons and missile programmes. Although India enjoys an internationally impeccable record on proliferation, leaks to the US media from the Bush administration insinuated that Indian scientists have been helping Iran in its weapons programme. There were one or two Indian nuclear scientists who had earlier been with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who, after retirement, had taken up consultancy assignments with Iran's nuclear establishment. There was nothing secret about their activities. They were experts on “safety” of nuclear plants, not enrichment facilities. The nuclear industry is a very wide spectrum of specialized sectors and one does not overlap with the other.
The efforts of the non-proliferation lobby failed. This lobby, which played a major role in the Democratic administration of President Clinton condemning the 1998 nuclear tests, had their supporters in the Republican Bush administration, too. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) headed by Dr. David Albright, a former UN Inspector in Iraq, played no small role in trying to depict India as a proliferators and accusing it of illegally acquiring nuclear weapons technology from abroad. The position adopted by the US non-proliferation lobby under the Clinton administration following the Pokhran-II nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998 need to be seen against their position on Pakistan-China and Pakistan-North Korea nuclear and missile technology proliferations.
For years, the American administration at the highest level refused to make a determination of the China-Pakistan proliferation channel, including Chinese supply of M-11 nuclear capable missiles in 1990-92. The US intelligence, the CIA, had the smoking gun evidence on the M-11 missiles transferred to Pakistan and kept at the Sargoda airbase, but President George Bush Sr. ignored the evidence. Skipping to a more recent frame, there was very little criticism and protests from the Washington anti-proliferation group led by people like Einhorn, when Libya decided to come clean on its nuclear programme and handed over all connected documents and items to the USA. This was the unraveling of the infamous nuclear proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist A Q Khan. Khan had been very close to Chinese and North Korean nuclear and missile establishments. The surrendered Libyan documents included manuals in Chinese script. The blame was put squarely on one individual, Dr.Khan. And Dr. Khan, a hero of Pakistan, remains without any international access to question him.
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