US pushes India on nuclear deal

CALCUTTA (India)—Visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urged India on Sunday to quickly implement a landmark civilian nuclear energy deal with the United States. Paulson was speaking in Calcutta, a stronghold of India’s communists, who oppose the deal and have threatened to topple the government if it goes ahead with it.
“This is a very important deal,” Paulson told reporters after a conference on bringing banking services to India’s impoverished masses. “We want the nuclear deal to move as quickly as possible.” The deal would reverse three decades of American anti-proliferation policy by allowing the U.S. to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has been cut off from the global atomic trade by its refusal to sign nonproliferation treaties and its testing of nuclear weapons.
Last week, the Indian government said it would wait to finalize the agreement for at least a month after inconclusive talks with its communist political allies. Paulson acknowledged that the Indian government would have to first solve its internal disputes. “You all have to work through your own internal political decision. That’s up to India,” said Paulson, who also met with West Bengal state’s communist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya later Sunday.
Paulson did not address the media after that meeting, leaving the building following a scuffle among journalists jockeying for position near him. Paulson is visiting India from Saturday to Wednesday, with stops in Calcutta, Mumbai and New Delhi. He has said he will encourage India to step up economic reforms and search for a solution to long-stalled global trade talks.
The Indian government has not taken the next steps in closing the civilian nuclear energy deal — negotiating separate agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Suppliers Group, a group of nations that export nuclear material.
The deal faces opposition in America, too. Critics there, including some in Congress, say providing U.S. fuel to India would free up India’s limited domestic supplies of nuclear material for use in atomic weapons, which they argue could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia. President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have sold the deal, first conceived in 2005, as a way to bring India — a nuclear weapons state — into the international atomic mainstream.
They also have touted its benefits for India’s booming but energy-hungry economy, which would gain access to much-needed atomic fuel and technologies. “It would help India to meet its energy needs,” Paulson said Sunday.
The United States has asked India to not to proceed with Iran, Pakistan, India gas pipeline project. The leading English Indian daily reported that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is expected to ask India to keep away from the project during his visit to India starting from Sunday. “We are hoping that India won’t move forward on [the pipeline],” a US treasury official said.
The daily said US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice flew in to New Delhi two years back to tell Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government not to proceed with the India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project. She left, promising to pave the way for a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. Henry Paulson is expected to do the same job during his visit. The paper further said the US Treasury Undersecretary for international affairs David McCormick told a press conference in Washington that Mr. Paulson will urge India not to move forward with the India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project. “We are hoping that India won’t move forward on this,” McCormick said.
“We think at a time when the world should be imposing greater discipline on its interactions with [Iranian] companies and financial institutions and the Iranian government more broadly, that this is not the right path forward. We have been very clear on that.” Mr. McCormick went on to suggest that the US had a “profound understanding” of India’s energy needs and it was “one of the underlying pieces of logic” of the nuclear deal. “But,” he added, “we do not see a pipeline with Iran providing India with any real energy security given the state of the Iranian regime.”
The daily said India maintains that it is interested in purchasing the Iranian gas, but the fresh round of sanctions by the US on Iran may have put the “peace pipeline” project in jeopardy. According to reports, Pakistan Petroleum Secretary Farrakh Qayyum has invited his Indian counterpart M.S. Srinivasan for comprehensive bilateral talks between November 1 and 3 or between November 12 and 14 in Islamabad to resolve issues relating to the project.
The US could also invoke the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to impose sanctions on countries that assist Iran in exploiting its petroleum resources, the paper reported.
Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline has a significant role in establishing security and stability in the region. This was stated by Pakistan Ambassador to Tehran, Shafkat Saeed, while speaking on the sidelines of Kashmir’s Black Day function held at the Embassy of Pakistan.
He said the thirty year gas agreement is a very important project for the Pakistani Government and the gas imported from Iran would be used for the industrial development of the country, especially for the development of cement, textile and fertilizer industries.
Referring to the presence of a large gas pipeline network in Pakistan, the Ambassador said that Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project would certainly have its impact on regional peace and security and we hope India would also be able to have a share in the project.—Agencies
Reiterating the significance of establishing peace between India and Pakistan, he said “Pakistan has launched efforts for improvement of its ties with India and we hope India would be able to overcome its problems and join the peace pipeline project.”
The Ambassador said “We have informed Iran that we are prepared to transfer Iran’s gas to China through this pipeline should India decide not to join the gas project.” He added there was a lot of support for the peace pipeline in Pakistan and we do not want Iran to feel isolated. He said the peace pipeline is an economic project and any government that comes to power in Pakistan will support it.
The Ambassador also said that Pakistan intends to set up a terminal in South Pakistan with Iran’s collaboration where gas imported from Iran would be converted to LNG and then exported to other regions. On security for the peace pipeline inside the Pakistani territory, he said Pakistan Government had already announced that it would provide full guarantee in this regard.