NEW DELHI: Has the controversial United States-India nuclear cooperation deal finally run out of steam after tough, and at times tortuous, negotiations spread over two-and-a-half years?

There are several pointers that this may have happened on account of both domestic and international factors.

Indications are that the Indian government’s negotiations with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which went into four rounds, may be something of a charade to maintain the pretence that the deal is moving forward and would be completed by March or April.

The process of completing the deal has suffered external setbacks, such as the resignation of the key US negotiator, undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns. But the main reasons are domestic.

The most important domestic factor at work has been the strong, widespread domestic political opposition to the deal, and in particular, the Left parties’ threat to withdraw critical support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government if it proceeds to “operationalise” it. Such withdrawal would put the government in a parliamentary minority.

Although the Left agreed in mid-November to allow the government to approach the IAEA for a special safeguards (inspections) agreement mandated under the deal, it did so on condition that no agreement would be signed unless first approved by a 15-member joint committee of the Left and the UPA.

The first clear indication that the UPA would not risk withdrawal of support came on Jan 11 when Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: “We have to carry our supporters (the Left) with us because if they withdraw support, the government will be in a minority. Nobody is going to sign an international agreement of this nature with a minority government.”

Also at work has been the UPA’s aversion to a mid-term election, especially after its leading party, the Congress, suffered a stinging electoral defeat in Gujarat at the hands of its arch rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), last month and lost the election in the small northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

During the past month, many Left leaders have reiterated that they remain implacably opposed to the nuclear deal and will not be party to its further negotiation beyond the IAEA.

Under the deal, a 45-nation association known as the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) must grant India complete exemption from its tough regulations pertaining to nuclear commerce after the IAEA safeguards are agreed. And before the deal becomes operational, the US Congress must ratify a bilateral agreement signed last July between the US and India, called “the 123 agreement” (because it refers to Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954).

Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM), said on Jan 20 that the government cannot move forward with the deal. “It has gone to the IAEA, it will come back to this committee, which we have set up...it is not going forward anywhere.”

However, the clearest and most categorical indicator came earlier this week with the release of the draft political resolution to be discussed at the CPM’s Congress in March.

Paragraph 2.32 of the document reads: “The firm stand taken by the Party and the Left brought ... (the nuclear deal) to the national centre stage...the Party exposed the adverse impact for India’s independent foreign policy and strategic autonomy if the nuclear agreement locks in India to a strategic tie up with the United States.”

It goes on to say: “The Party and the Left decided that it would do whatever is necessary to block the agreement. Faced with the political consequences of such a confrontation with the Left, the Congress and the UPA decided not to proceed further with the operationalisation of the agreement.”

Given that India’s communist parties take their party congresses and associated documents extremely seriously, this statement must be taken at its face value.

“It would be astonishing if as important a document as the draft political resolution of a communist party were to contain a false statement or a gross mis-assessment of existing political realities,” says Achin Vanaik, a professor of political science at Delhi University, and a long-time student of Left-wing politics.

So the Left’s offer to allow the government to go to Vienna to negotiate a safeguards agreement might essentially have been a face-saving formula.

However, the negotiations with the IAEA have been far from smooth. Their slow progress over more than two months has belied the government’s expectation, expressed repeatedly in the past, that the special safeguards agreement would go through like a shot and be concluded within weeks, if not days.

In part, the expectation was based on as its strong support to expressed for the deal by IAEA director-general Mohamed El-Baradei.

In reality, the Vienna talks were marked by a number of obstacles, including India’s insistence on guarantees of uninterrupted fuel supplies for its reactors, and its demand to be allowed to build a strategic fuel reserve. Equally tricky was the issue of India being allowed to take “corrective measures” in case a supplier of nuclear fuel, materials or equipment stops their delivery.

The latest problem pertains to the definition of what constitutes “peaceful purposes” in the use of nuclear energy. Under the “123 agreement”, this excludes research in or use of materials in “the development of any nuclear explosive device”.

But it not only covers the “use of information, nuclear material, equipment or components” in such fields as “research, power generation, medicine,” etc, but also includes “power for a military base, drawn from any power network, production of radio-isotopes to be used in medical purposes in military environment for diagnostics,” etc.

The Indian government insists on the “123 agreement” definition, but the IAEA says this may not be easily accepted by its board of governors.

It is possible that the Vienna talks could founder on one or more of several contentious issues, major or minor. If New Delhi takes an inflexible position, for instance, by insisting that certain clauses such as guaranteed fuel supplies must be part of the operative text of the agreement, and not just included in its preamble that would be enough to stall the negotiations.

“Taking a tough position makes sense from one point of view,” says M. V. Ramana, a nuclear affairs analyst based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development in Bangalore. “The UPA government would prefer it that the deal fails at the IAEA than that it is killed by the Left.”

“If the deal collapses in Vienna, the UPA can claim virtue by saying it didn’t compromise on principles or the national interest, and instead sacrificed the deal,” he said.

Meanwhile, signs have emerged of growing international opposition to the nuclear deal. Australia under its new Labour government has reversed its earlier decision to sell uranium to India, and says that it cannot supply fuel to a country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.—The IPS News Service