Indo-US nuclear deal will have 'implications' at global level

WASHINGTON: Insisting that the Indo-US civil nuclear deal will have "implications" at global level, former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has attacked the Bush administration saying that it moved away from the "rule-based" system by granting an exception to New Delhi.

Talbott, who served under the Bill Clinton government, said China appears to be ready to question the country-specific nature of the agreement.

He said the Iran issue will continue to remain a "contentious issue" in US-India relations but overall the "fundamentals (of the ties) are very strong".

"In granting an exception to India the Bush administration had moved away from a rule-based system," he said at a session at School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday, which was attended by former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.

He said the Clinton administration had adopted a tough attitude with India on nuclear issues but it had nothing to do with New Delhi's track record or credentials on non-proliferation. "What about the rest of the world" was in the minds of the Clinton administration, he maintained.

The US was looking at the larger implications of India's actions in 1998 (when the Pokhran nuclear tests were conducted), he said. The civil nuclear deal does not mean that it is the end of the debate on the nuclear issue, Talbott said.

"To call this a deal would be to give the Bush administration the benefit of doubt, to suggest that the Bush administration got something out of the deal," Talbott said.

He said the deal was being seen as an India-specific "exception by some important players, including China".

Having visited Beijing recently, Talbott said, "I got the distinct impression that the Chinese are reserving the right under the Nuclear Suppliers Group to weigh the question of whether this should be a country-specific arrangement or whether there should be some either general or specific language attached to the NSG's approval of it that would permit China to look at for its client Pakistan."

His comments came over a month after he attacked the Bush administration for agreeing to the nuclear deal in the present form, saying it amounted to giving "cost-free exception to the strictures of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Talbott had earlier said that his concerns were not that "India will be an irresponsible custodian of nuclear weapons" but that other countries, using India's case, would demand the same.

The former official at Foggy Bottom who along with Singh negotiated a way through a heady period in bilateral relations in the aftermath of the 1998 tests, said "when Dr. Singh came to this hemisphere, it was to go to Havana, to the Non-Aligned Summit, where he played a very constructive role, by the way, in diluting what would have otherwise been really very obnoxious anti-American sentiments on the communique."

Talbott said there had certainly been "a degree of over-hyping on both sides, and an unhealthy gyration in both mood and expectations" regarding the deal. But he expressed confidence that the pact could get through the Lame Duck session in the US Senate.

"...in the immediate wake, for example, both the Prime Minister's (Manmohan Singh) visit here and President Bush's visit to India, there was something close to euphoria, but that seems to... have largely dissipated.

"What was originally perceived in India as a great triumph of India's diplomacy was all of a sudden perceived or at least criticised as a terrible give away by the Manmohan Singh government - that the Americans had somehow had their way with India in this deal, which is so bizarre to those of us who follow the debate from the American side," he said.