Mumbai, Aug. 6 (PTI): The agreement to operationalize the Indo-US civil nuclear deal has "compromised India's case to a large extent and the United States could "remotely drive our atomic programmes in the long run," former Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Dr A N Prasad, said here Sunday night.
He said the draft text of the 123 agreement, reached in Washington last month, clearly tried to accommodate diverging interests and constraints of both India and US by clever use of the language.
"We are now in effect reduced to a mere recipient state mandated by the Henry Hyde Act (passed by the US Congress) to carry out a set of do's and don'ts and strive to earn a good behavior report card to become eligible to continue receiving what they can offer," he said.
"In the process, slowly but surely, they (US) could gain control and remotely drive our nuclear programmes in the long run," Prasad said.
Prasad, who was active in IAEA inspections in Iraq, said "this deal, through the Hyde Act, gives far too many opportunities to penetrate deep into and interfere even in our 3-stage programme to slow down realization of our goal to harness our own vast resources of thorium for long-term energy security."
Prasad pointed to two points in support of his view: first revelation by Nicholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State, during his interview to the Council on Foreign Relations and secondly the duration of the 123 agreement coinciding with the time India intending to take thorium use to a commercial reality.
He pointed to Burns' remark that "it had been an easy 'strategic' choice for Washington when faced with the question - should we isolate India for the next 35 years or bring it in partially now (under safeguards inspection) and nearly totally in the future."
Secondly, Article 16.2 of the 123 text says the agreement shall remain in force for 40 years and at the end of this initial period each party may, terminate by giving 6 month's notice.
"There is no built-in provision for terminating before 40 years even if we were to suffer for any reason in the implementation of the deal. This is expected to cover the period by which we intend to take the thorium utilization to a commercial reality," he said, adding "what a coincidence?".
"Is it not obvious that their intention is to put hurdles on our thorium utilization programme right from the beginning? Prasad said.
Talking about some of the contentious issues like reprocessing of spent fuel issue which has been stated to be the most hotly debated issues, Prasad, considered the father of India's reprocessing technology, said "reprocessing is at the core of our 3-stage nuclear power programme.
"The irony is US, knowing fully well our four decades of experience in reprocessing and aware of its importance in our 3-stage programme, has sought to create impediments and make us cringe for reprocessing consent, that too after accepting us as strategic partner. Should we call this nuclear cooperation or non-cooperation?" he said.
He said it was naive to judge the merits of the civil nuclear deal purely based on the language of the draft of the text of the 123 agreement.
"The underlying under-currents and the intentions of the controlling party are important and cannot be wished away as hypothetical or as their internal matter and of no concern to us when they do actually have serious repercussions on our long-term interests," Prasad remarked.
He said there has been a careful balancing of US commercial interests with the goal of bringing India into the non-proliferation hold, an obsession they are pursuing for a long time ever since NPT came into existence in 1970.
"There have been overt suggestions in the Hyde Act to the US Administration for not only attempting to cap, but also try to eventually roll back our strategic programme and report to the Congress", Prasad said.
"Try they will, but whether we are smart enough to thwart their designs or they manage to succeed given the tremendous access they get through this deal, time will tell," he said.
Prasad said even though there is what is called a fast reactor nuclear fuel cycle, not a word is mentioned in the agreement on fast reactor cooperation while the text calls for all future fast breeder reactors to be put under civil list for applying safeguards in perpetuity just because plutonium extracted from imported uranium spent fuel is fed into these reactors.
Dr Prasad is such a senior guy that his views cant be discounted very easily. I am now getting more inclined to believe that this deal is less about cooperation but more about US attempt to gain control of our N-activities in the long run [Burns is on the record about strategic choice and bringing 90-95% of our reactors and facilities under IAEA]. I will be very relieved if this deal fails to pass thru Congress.