SPEAKERS:
AMBASSADOR NORMAN WULF,
FORMER PRESIDENT’S SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION, 1999-2002
ZIA MIAN,
RESEARCH SCIENTIST,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY,
PROGRAM ON SCIENCE AND GLOBAL SECURITY
MICHAEL KREPON,
PRESIDENT EMERITUS AND CO-FOUNDER,
THE HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER
MODERATOR:
DARYL G. KIMBALL,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
THE ARMS CONTROL ASSOCIATION
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2006
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.
Edited by the Arms Control Association
DARYL KIMBALL: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming at 9:00 a.m. instead of our usual 9:30 start time. I’m Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. Welcome to this briefing on the upcoming Senate debate about the proposal for increased nuclear trade between the United States and India.
The Arms Control Association is a public education and research organization. We have been around since 1971. This is our 35th year. We are committed to practical and effective strategies for reducing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons threats. We have been working with a broad coalition of experts and organizations for over a year now to urge U.S. policymakers to examine the proposal that was put forward by President [George W.] Bush and Prime Minster [Manmohan] Singh in July 2005 more carefully. And we have been advising the Congress and others to address the many flaws that we see in this ill-advised deal. While the Congress has responded to these concerns by tightening some of the loopholes in the administration’s original legislative proposal, we believe that serious problems continue to persist.
We are here today on the eve of the Senate’s likely consideration of the enabling legislation for this proposal to highlight what the most serious flaws of the proposal are and to explain what we believe can and must be done to address those flaws. We also want to clarify before this debate and vote what we believe will be the far-reaching and adverse ramifications of the deal if Congress fails to stand up for a more sensible approach.
Before I turn the podium over to our expert speakers, I want to provide a little bit of an introduction about this issue and what they are going to say. I think it’s important just to note that for over three decades, the United States and the international community have been trying to engage the world’s nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) holdout states, especially India and Pakistan. They have acknowledged that they have nuclear weapons. And over time that effort has been substantial and it has been a significant factor in limiting India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. But now with this proposal, the Bush administration seeks to reverse this decades-long approach by making India-specific exceptions to U.S. laws and international guidelines that currently prohibit nuclear commerce with states like India that do not accept full-scope safeguards. That means safeguards over all of their nuclear facilities, whether they’re military or civilian.
The president has also pledged to seek changes to the guidelines of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) which currently restrict trade with states like India that don’t accept full-scope safeguards. That policy of the NSG, by the way, was a policy adopted in 1992 under the leadership of President George Herbert Walker Bush.
As our first speaker Norm Wulf is going to explain, this proposal would not, as proponents claim, bring India into the nonproliferation mainstream. Instead it would blow enormous holes in the nonproliferation barriers that have kept the proliferation floodwaters in check.
Ambassador Wulf, who is recently retired, has spent nearly his entire career fighting in the international diplomatic trenches for U.S. nonproliferation security objectives. He will explain why he believes on balance that India’s commitments under the current terms of the proposal do not justify making far-reaching exceptions to U.S. nonproliferation laws and international standards.
Now, as many of you know by now who have been following this—I see many people in the audience who I met for the first time about two years ago when we started discussing this issue—the proposed deal would not put under safeguards India’s military reactors, its enrichment and reprocessing facilities, and weapons fabrication facilities. India has not agreed to halt the production of fissile material for weapons purposes.
Our second speaker, Zia Mian of Princeton University, is going to explain how the supply of nuclear fuel from other countries to India could help free up India’s existing and limited nuclear capacity to produce material for nuclear weapons. Zia’s presentation, by the way, is based largely on the findings of a report that is out on the table by the International Panel on Fissile Materials. The report is an excellent and very good technical analysis of this issue. I should say that I think it is probably the best technical assessment of this complicated issue that has been done to date.
Now, proponents of the deal have made much of India’s pledge to accept safeguards on additional nuclear facilities. However, as we have noted and you should know by now, India has pledged only to accept safeguards at eight additional civilian nuclear reactors by the year 2014, which leaves at least eight other reactors available for weapons purposes, not including the dedicated military reactors that are there already.
Just as troubling, India has not agreed to put those civilian reactors under permanent safeguards as the current congressional legislation would require. Both the Senate and the House legislation require this. India is also seeking in its negotiations with the United States on the [bilateral 123] agreement for nuclear cooperation, which has to be worked out, assurances that the United States will help supply India with nuclear fuel in the event that such supplies are interrupted; even if fuel supplies are interrupted because India resumes nuclear testing or violates its agreement for nuclear cooperation.
Our third and final speaker, Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center, is going to explain what the potential ramifications of that scenario are and how the Senate might address it.
Finally, before Ambassador Wulf comes to the podium, I would like to bring to your attention a letter that has been sent to the Senate just last night from over a dozen leading U.S. nonproliferation experts. In this letter, we describe the shortcomings I just outlined, as well as some other shortcomings in the Senate legislation (S. 3709), as well as several fixes that we believe can and should be adopted in the form of amendments to the bill.
Now, we can talk a little bit further about the prospects for the legislation in the Q&A which will follow the speakers, but just for now let me note that I don’t think that any of us here doubt that the overall package will be voted on either this year in the lame duck session or at least next year. But what additional stipulations and conditions might be added to the legislation are yet to be determined. That is where the real debate on this legislation will be. Several senators are likely to introduce amendments to the Senate bill, including Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who offered a very good amendment in the Foreign Relations Committee that would address the nonproliferation flaws that we and others have identified in this legislation.
We agree that it is important to build upon the U.S.-Indian relationship, but we think that there are ways in which we can do this without undermining vital U.S. nuclear nonproliferation goals and international standards that have protected the United States and other countries for decades.
So with that introduction, let me ask Ambassador Wulf to come to the podium. Each speaker will make their remarks and then we will take your questions and answers. Thanks.
NORMAN WULF: I have to start off by saying that I mentioned to Daryl that I hadn’t had a suit on for so long I had to practice tying my necktie last night. (Laughter.) He suggested I should have practiced a little more. Thanks, Daryl.
KIMBALL: You did a fine job.
WULF: For many of you—or at least for me, let’s put it this way—I’m a little nervous today because I’m doing something I don’t think I’ve done in, say, 38 years of my career. I started shortly after law school getting a notice from something called the Selective Service Board and ended up spending six and a half years in the Navy. There you followed orders and did not question them. Then I spent 30 years working for the U.S. government and representing the U.S. government in front of a lot of different foreign groups and, needless to say, ended up espousing the U.S. line of what it would do. I have refrained since retirement from entering into the public arena and publicly criticizing actions by the administration that I think are wrong.
But this one I think is so wrong and does so much harm that I decided that I have to speak up. I’m not sure it is going to make any difference, as Daryl indicated, but nonetheless, I want to share with you briefly why I think it is so wrong and why I think it does so much damage.
I think all of you know that it was the United States that was the moving force for the creation of the NPT. After its creation, we worked assiduously to convince virtually all the countries in the world to become parties; all except three: Israel, India, and Pakistan. We had North Korea for a while, but as you know, they withdrew from the treaty in 2003. The United States has had a uniform policy that goes back to the Manhattan Project that all proliferation is bad. For the first time, this administration has now decided that some proliferation, if not good, at least is acceptable. That is going to have tremendous costs in the dealing with the variety of issues. Let me just give you one example.
When I first got into the nonproliferation field in the early 1980s, we had a tremendously difficult time convincing many of our European partners that they shouldn’t make a sale. Countries like to make sales. That’s what they exist for. What they want to do is keep their corporations happy and allow them to make sales. So export control regimes are very difficult things for countries to vigorously enforce. If you think of our government and think of their government, it’s basically the same. You have on one side a nonproliferation crowd that’s worried about proliferation (a national security crowd) and on the other side you have the Department of Commerce, or whatever the equivalent might be, the ministry of trade, and they want to promote sales. For the longest time, the nonproliferation crowd was not the predominant voice in many governments of suppliers of nuclear technology.
I would say in the last 10 years it has pretty well changed. The nonproliferation crowd has become a strong, dominant voice and nonproliferation was viewed as something that was in their interest and that denying their companies an opportunity to make a sale was a sensible policy to pursue. I very much fear that what we have taught the other ministries in other governments is that the general principle, all proliferation is bad, is no longer valid. Rather, the principle is, well, if it’s really important to you to have a good relationship with a country, or if it’s really important for you to make this one sale, it’s all right.
So by departing from a general principle and making exceptions, we’re opening the door to others to make exceptions.
I think all of you have sufficient imagination that it’s not impossible to foresee that should this deal finally go through, Pakistan and probably Israel will be seeking similar treatment in the not-too-distant future. I think it’s inevitable. And the Middle East context at least is one, as Ambassador Bob Grey recalls, we spent a lot of time dealing with the Israeli problem in the context of the NPT because the Arab states kept saying, there’s an exception. We were able to say to them, there’s no exception; we do not engage in any civil nuclear cooperation with Israel. As a result of opening this door for this one small exception for India, we now open the door so Israel also can follow. I can assure you that we will reap a very bitter harvest in the Middle East, even perhaps more bitter than what we have now.
There also obviously is the fact that for a lengthy part of my government service we were very much preoccupied with three governments who had unsafeguarded nuclear facilities and who we believed had the intention of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. They were South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil. Over time they gave up, primarily for their own internal reasons but also because I think of some external pressures, their weapons programs and they became parties to the NPT.
All of them had been subject to U.S. sanctions. All of them had been deprived of the possibility of U.S. nuclear components, reactors, et cetera. All had been deprived of U.S. fuel. I think it was a factor in their decision to abandon their weapons program, become a party to the NPT, and to put their nuclear program under safeguards. You’ve got to wonder if we’re not breaking faith with those countries.
I also recall very vividly when the Soviet Union dissolved and nuclear weapons were stationed on the territory of three former republics: Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. The United States put a tremendous diplomatic effort into persuading those governments not to retain those weapons, to allow the Russians to take them back to Russian territory, and for them to become parties to the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states. Again, it seems to me they can very well charge the United States with breaking faith with them for their commitment.
One of the obligations in the NPT that the nuclear-weapon states undertake is not in any way to assist another country to acquire nuclear weapons. I think one of our speakers is going to go into this at some length with respect to whether U.S. assistance could assist India’s nuclear weapons program. I don’t want to be on record as saying that what the United States is doing is a violation of the NPT, but I can certainly say I believe it’s inconsistent with the spirit and the intent of the NPT.
U.S. efforts were not limited to obtaining the NPT and obtaining universal adherence or near-universal adherence. In 1974, as many of you know, India first conducted a nuclear test and they did it by diverting supplies from another country. The reaction to that was for the United States to propose establishment of a suppliers group. There was already a suppliers group in existence as a result of the NPT, but in 1974, many countries were not parties to the NPT. Chief among them were China and France. They did not join until 1992.
So to get those countries and other suppliers who were not parties into an export control regime, we helped bring about the creation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This group elaborated on technologies that were too sensitive to export to countries unless the exports were under international inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Over time, we took into that forum, as a result of legislation passed by the Congress in 1979, a requirement that they would not sell to any country that had unsafeguarded nuclear facilities. Up to that time, the United States and others didn’t make sales of reactor components and other critical components for a nuclear energy program to countries that had unsafeguarded activities. There was no prohibition; it was probably imprudent in retrospect not to have done so, but it was not prohibited. But in 1978 the Congress said the United States will no longer make such exports. We then went to the NSG—and it took a number of years I’m going to quickly add—but we persuaded them to adopt a similar standard. So now the NSG rule is no exports to any country if they have any unsafeguarded nuclear facilities.
In the late 1990s, Russia decided—after having recently joined the NSG—that it had a real good chance to make some reactor sales to India so it would try to fit this under a grandfather clause that they had come up with. The United States led the effort against that, saying it violated the so-called full-scope safeguards rule.
Now what are we doing? Just the same thing basically that the Russians had done. However, unlike the Russians, we’re seeking to get the rules changed as opposed to just doing it regardless of the rules. But by sounding such an uncertain trumpet, we are again weakening the nonproliferation regime, we’re weakening U.S. leadership, and promoting proliferation. We’re saying to other countries that we came up with a good justification for making an exception and you probably can too.
The last thing I want to touch on is the timing question. India argued to our negotiators that the litmus test of U.S.-Indian friendship was nuclear cooperation—an argument, I might add, they’ve been making for some 20 years. It hadn’t been bought previously but it was bought now. The real question in my mind is what evidence do we have that India is prepared to take the steps necessary to make this deal work? As I think will be explained later, there are basically four big steps that have got to be accomplished. First and foremost, the United States and India have to sit down and negotiate an agreement for cooperation. The Atomic Energy Act says you must have this congressionally mandated agreement for cooperation. My understanding is that serious [differences remain in the negotiations].
The second thing that has to occur is India must sit down and negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Here too my understanding—I’m no longer in government so I may not have this correct—is not much has happened there either.
The third thing that must happen is that Congress must change U.S. law to basically remove the requirement that everything must be under safeguards before any cooperation can occur.
The fourth thing is that the United Sates presumably must convince the Nuclear Suppliers Group to change the rules and make an exception for India. The question in my mind is why should the Congress be the one to take the first step? Let’s make sure of India’s bone fides. The Indian press is so free and so fulsome that you can find virtually anything in the Indian press, but the Indian press basically is very, very critical of some of the elements that would be required in an agreement for cooperation.
So my suggestion is that you probably ought to have Congress wait until we see some evidence that the sacrifices will not be just one-sided; that there will be sacrifices by both sides. But right now the approach is the United States Congress should act and make this exception and then eventually presumably we’ll get the Nuclear Suppliers Group and then eventually India will negotiate a cooperation agreement with the United States.
I want to close by speculating that there are at least two scenarios under which the United States pays all the price and other countries get all the profits and get all the benefits.
Scenario one would have the Congress do what the administration is requesting it to do, which is to pass this exception now. India then sits down and says, “Well, we’re not too sure. Let’s keep negotiating on this 123 Agreement. There are a lot of onerous conditions.” Meanwhile, the United States then persuades the Nuclear Suppliers Group to make an exception. At that point, India can get up and walk away from the table with the United States. They don’t need the United States. They can buy from France, they can buy from Russia, they can buy from other suppliers because the exception is now written into the NSG rules. Wouldn’t it be far better to make sure that some of these basic agreements that sort of define how cooperation is to occur are in place first and do the exceptions later if we have to go the exception route?
My own bias is that the United States ought to respond to India’s request to be treated just like China is that we ought to respond in the affirmative. By that I mean what India is saying is something slightly different. They say, well, you engage in nuclear cooperation with China and you ought to engage in nuclear cooperation with us. Indeed, the United States does have an agreement for cooperation with China, and because China is a nuclear-weapon state, and because the NPT allows cooperation with nuclear-weapon states without full-scope safeguards agreements in place, we have this agreement with China.
But what I mean is that we should treat India the same way as we treat China is that there are many areas of cooperation between the United States and China that are off limits; off limits because of the differences over human rights, off limits because of security concerns. Often it’s for a variety of reasons. Yet it’s an extremely broad and encompassing relationship. I think we ought to do exactly the same thing with India: have an extremely broad and encompassing relationship but there should be one exception: no nuclear cooperation. Thank you.
KIMBALL: Thank you very much, Ambassador Wulf. Zia Mian, if you would step up to the microphone. Thank you.
ZIA MIAN: Thank you. As Daryl mentioned in the introduction, what I’m going to talk about is the results of an assessment that a group of us who are physicists associated with the International Panel on Fissile Materials did over the last year on some of the implications of this deal if it goes ahead as presently structured for India’s capacity to make fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
An earlier version of this, looking at the larger scope of this issue, was in an article that was published in Arms Control Today earlier this year. I think there may be copies outside for those who want to have a look at that also. Let me just say a few words about the international panel and then I’ll talk about what our understanding is.
Earlier this year, a group of us who have been worried for a long time about a need to control the production of fissile materials and to improve the security of fissile materials for weapons and to find ways forward for eliminating the very large existing stockpiles of fissile materials in the world, got together and thought that we could try and improve the standard of the international debate about what to do with plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons around the world. Right now we have 15 independent technical people from around the world. We have members from the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Norway, Germany, et cetera. The whole list of them you can find on our website at fissilematerials.org. We’ve published our first report, which summarizes our best understanding of the global stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons around the world, what are the challenges for doing something about it, and what are some of those ways forward that we think might be worth exploring by the international community.
Turning now to the U.S.-Indian deal, I first want to just add one thing to what Ambassador Wulf said by way of the implications of the deal regardless of the specific amounts of fissile material for weapons that India may be able to produce. I say “may” because we’re not saying that they will, but they would have the capacity to do so. In addition to the nonproliferation problems that he outlined, one thing that I would like to have people remember is that just after the North Korean nuclear test, the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution condemning North Korea for having conducted this nuclear test and imposing sanctions of various kinds on North Korea.
I think it’s very important that the international community, through the Security Council, make very clear that this is what we think about nuclear weapons testing; that we don’t think countries should be doing it. Now, the problem is that we’ve been here once before. After the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan—India tested on May 11 and 13, and Pakistan tested on May 28 and 30—the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution on June 6, 1998. Resolution 1172 said that the Security Council was deeply concerned at the risk of a nuclear arms race in South Asia and was determined to prevent such a race. It outlined a series of demands on both countries, and I’ll just say what they were.
One was that India and Pakistan should stop the further development of nuclear weapons, that they should not deploy their nuclear weapons, that they should stop developing ballistic missiles, and that they should stop producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons. There also were some others.
Now, since 1998 and this unanimous resolution from the Security Council, we have seen benign neglect—actually, I think “benign” is not the appropriate word—appalling irresponsibility by the Security Council and its members that they have basically forgotten that they ever passed this resolution because India and Pakistan have continued to do all the things they were told they should not do. With this deal, the United States is now saying that that resolution may as well never have been passed because no longer is it interested in saying that India and Pakistan must not produce fissile material for nuclear weapons; it’s saying if you do, that’s your business; it has nothing to do with us.
What does that mean now for future Security Council resolutions, unanimous or otherwise, that says you must do this? What it says is that as time passes, as interests change, who knows what the status of that resolution may be, that perhaps you shouldn’t take them very seriously at all in the future. I find that deeply troubling considering we’re dealing with nuclear weapons.
So, turning to the deal, one of the most important issues that this deal centers on is the fact that it would allow India to import uranium, which it is presently not allowed to do. India has an important reason for wanting to import uranium: it’s going through an acute uranium crunch. Soon after the deal was announced, an Indian official actually told the BBC, “The truth is we were desperate. We have nuclear fuel to last only until the end of 2006. If this agreement had not come through, we might as well close down some of our nuclear reactors and our nuclear program.”
When we looked at India’s capacity to produce its own uranium for its nuclear reactors, both its power reactors and the uranium it uses for its weapons programs, there is good reason to believe that this was an honest assessment. India mines a lot less uranium than it actually needs every year because it’s built more reactors faster than it has been able to develop its uranium mining, in part because of substantial opposition from local communities to new uranium mining in India because of the terrible environmental legacy that they have seen accompanies this activity.
On September 23, the head of the Department of Atomic Energy of India, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, actually was interviewed and asked specifically about this question of a uranium shortage in India. He was asked, is it true that the capacity factor of our nuclear reactors—in other words, what proportion of their actual operating power that they’re supposed to run up—has it come down to 65 percent from 90 percent? That normally it was 90 percent until a few years ago; is it true that they’re now running at 65 percent of their capacity. He said, yes, and this is because there is a mismatch in the uranium, which means there isn’t enough uranium to run these reactors at the rates that they were supposed to be running and that they had been running until a few years ago. They’ve used up the stockpile of uranium that they had accumulated in the past. So they need this deal badly. Because of their ambitious plans they have to expand nuclear energy in India, and for their weapons program.
The details of how much uranium is mined in India and how it’s allocated to different parts of the program are in our report and you’re welcome to see the details, but India right now we estimate has about 500 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium already produced, and that’s about 100 weapons’ worth, roughly. There are reports that India has plans for an arsenal that is in the several-hundred-weapons range, comparable to the arsenals of Britain, France, and China in number if not in the destructive power of the weapons. India is far short of having the kind of stockpile of weapons material it needs for that kind of arsenal in the near future. It’s going to have this problem if it continues to have a uranium shortage.
As part of the deal, India will continue to operate the plutonium production reactors it uses to make weapons material and the centrifuge facility that it has for making highly enriched uranium, which India has been using to produce fuel for its nuclear submarine reactor. India, like the other nuclear-weapon states, sees itself going down a fairly traditional route of having nuclear weapons and missiles on airplanes and at sea. They want the nuclear submarine. They’ve built a core for it. And the centrifuge plant is producing highly enriched uranium for fuel, but it could also be used to make highly enriched uranium for weapons. None of these are going to be immediately shut down as part of this deal. The smaller of the Indian military production reactors, CIRUS, India has offered to shut down in 2010.
What the deal will do is that by allowing India to put eight of its civilian power reactors under international safeguards and then be able to import uranium to fuel those, the uranium that India does produce can then be allocated solely to its military reactors and the other parts of its weapons program. It means India basically frees up the uranium it would otherwise need for those eight reactors, which will be civilian and which you could get fuel for from abroad.
If it uses just one of those reactors that it keeps out of safeguards for its military program, it could produce up to 200 kilograms a year of weapons plutonium. In other words, it dramatically increases India’s capacity to produce weapons material. It’s a roughly four-fold increase above its current capacity, and that’s a huge quantum leap in India’s capability to produce weapons material.
The other element of this deal that is deeply troubling is that India has a fast-breeder reactor. Fast-breeder reactors, as many of you know, are fueled by plutonium but they actually make more plutonium than they use in the fuel. But there is an important difference: that you can fuel them using reactor-grade plutonium, stuff that comes out of a power reactor, but the plutonium that is produced in these reactors can be weapons-grade plutonium. So what you can basically do is feed in reactor-grade plutonium and produce weapons plutonium. India’s breeder reactor we find could do this, and it would produce on the order of 130 kilograms a year of weapons plutonium, which India could then harvest for its weapons program.
It may well be that the eight military reactors that India has kept out of safeguards will basically be used to produce the reactor-grade plutonium for this breeder. India wants to build four more of these breeders and they will all be out of safeguards. India has said—and I quote here again from Dr. Kakodkar, head of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy—that the reason for keeping the breeder reactor out of safeguards and away from international inspections is that, he says, “Both from the point of view of maintaining long-term energy security and for maintaining the minimum credible deterrent, the fast breeder reactor program just cannot be put on the civilian list.” In other words, this is a facility that has a military application as far as they’re concerned. The only military application will be to produce weapons plutonium. The U.S. did not insist on having this reactor put under safeguards.
Now, I should say that regardless of this deal, India would have built this reactor and produced weapons plutonium in it, but the deal was an opportunity to try to and get this into the civilian sector; that if you want a deal, then those kinds of facilities that do expressly allow you to make weapons plutonium should not be allowed to do this, all right, that we want these facilities in the civilian sector. But the U.S. did not push on it and the Indians got what they wanted.
Let me end by saying that, going back to the Security Council resolution, that the fear of an arms race is becoming acute. The Pakistani response, as you can imagine, to this has been we want the same deal that you gave the Indians, and the U.S. said of course not. So the Pakistanis have been talking to the Chinese, which in the NSG are talking about a criteria-based exemption, which opens the door possibly one day they hope for Pakistan also to be exempt from these kinds of conditions on not having access to nuclear material and technology from the international market. But Pakistan’s nuclear command authority has said expressly that we will do whatever it takes to maintain our minimum credible deterrent, as they call it, given that this deal allows India to make more material for weapons.
In other words, this deal, as far as Pakistan is concerned, is opening the door to a nuclear weapons race, or an acceleration of the nuclear weapons race in South Asia. They will stay in this race by building more centrifuges, perhaps building a second or third Kahuta facility, by getting the Chinese to help them upgrade the centrifuges they have, building another reactor for making weapons plutonium. There are many ways that they could respond to this and try and stay in this race. I think that is something that is deeply troubling to many of us. Thank you.
KIMBALL: Thank you, Zia. Michael?
MICHAEL KREPON: You’ve been patient and I will be short.
How does the Bush administration make extremely consequential decisions? Decisions are top-down, and the riskier the decision, the more the degree of exclusion in making that decision. This is not unique to the Bush administration.
The second hallmark of decision-making is that expertise within the administration is excluded in making the decision. This is somewhat different. The intelligence community is not used, or is misused prior to making a consequential decision.
The administration produces a fait accompli that has political appeal, or is hard to oppose on substantive grounds because of political reasons. The administration paints a very rosy picture of the upside potential of the deal, or the decision. The administration highlights only one downside risk. When you stop a train that has already left the station, it’s going to have terrible consequences for U.S. standing, for a bilateral relationship, for relationships with key friends and allies. You can’t stop a train that’s already left the station.
The administration dismisses other significant downside risks by embracing very optimistic assumptions. Does this sound familiar? The same modus operandi that produced the Iraq mess has also produced the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. This does not necessarily mean that the U.S.-Indian deal will do for proliferation what the invasion of Iraq has done for promoting democracy and stability in the Middle East. But it does mean that we have to look very, very hard at the underlying optimistic assumptions behind this deal. If these assumptions are indeed wildly optimistic, then we’re inviting a world of trouble with respect to proliferation.
So how solid are the underlying assumptions behind this deal? I will not place at the top of my list the assumption that this deal is good for nonproliferation. I will not insult your intelligence by repeating that argument. If this deal were good for nonproliferation, the administration would not be seeking a one-country-only exception. By seeking a one-country-only exception, the administration implicitly acknowledges what common sense would tell us, that this deal could have terrible downside risks if it were not limited to India, as Norm Wulf has said.
So what are the more credible underlying assumptions that are asserted for this deal? The first underlying assumption is that India will be a strong geo-strategic partner of the United States and this deal will solidify that. But this argument is less plausible the more one knows about India, and since there are a lot of people in this audience who know a lot about India, you know that India is a very proud country and it’s a very capable country, and it’s capable of determining its own national security interests. When those interests diverge from the United States of America’s security interests, India will go a separate way. There will be times that India will go a separate way on Iran, on China, and on other things because India can figure out what’s in its own best interests.
A second underlying assumption behind this deal is that U.S. firms will gain profits and U.S. workers will gain jobs in developing India’s nuclear power industry. I’m very doubtful of this, not only for the reasons that Norm Wulf has stated, but also for reasons of liability and liability insurance and liability waivers. Some of you in this room can recall back to 1984 when there was a terrible industrial accident at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. The release of chemicals at this pesticide plant killed 20,000 Indians, and I am having a hard time seeing how any nuclear power company in the United States will get liability insurance or legislation from the government of India or waivers that will allow it to proceed with construction.
So the business, as Norm has indicated, will go to France. The business and the jobs will go to Russia. The profits will go there as well. I think what’s left of the U.S. nuclear power industry in the United States understands that. (Audio break) – insurance, combat aircraft, what have you. But to argue that American workers will benefit, and American companies will benefit from building nuclear power plants in India, I think that is just far-fetched.
A third underlying assumption is that a special exception to the rules of nuclear commerce can be carved out for India and India alone. This is a huge assumption. I believe it to be false because in order to make this deal happen, the United States government is going to have to do side deals with other nuclear suppliers, and other nuclear suppliers are going to do their own deals without waiting for U.S. consent. You wait. Soon after the Congress passes this legislation, the government of India will do deals with France and Russia, and then the U.S. government will be left high and dry. This is a very optimistic assumption.
So what are the most significant downside risks, the risks that the Bush administration is glossing over? The first risk is that a good-guys versus bad-guys approach to nonproliferation will fundamentally disturb and weaken the global nonproliferation system. The global nonproliferation system is based on a unitary set of norms, that proliferation is bad. As Norm has said, it’s bad for everybody.
We determine who the good guys and the bad guys are against their behavior by checking their behavior against these norms that apply to everybody. A rules-based system will undermined by a bifurcation of norms in which one set of rules applies to good guys and another set of rules applies to bad guys. The system cannot be strengthened on this basis; it can only be weakened on this basis.
The second big downside risk is that the risk of the Nuclear Suppliers Group will become a dead letter. This is a huge risk. This is the most unusual cartel in the history of global commerce because its main purpose in life is to prevent profit making when profit making results in proliferation. There is no other cartel in the world like this, and if we bust it up for our friends, and if the Chinese bust it up for their friends, and if the Russians bust it up for their profits, we’re in a world of trouble.
If the P-5, which are supposed to be the principal stakeholders in the nonproliferation system, instead become the principal profit makers, we are in a world of trouble.
The fourth risk is that the provisions of the deal itself will make it easier for the government of India to resume nuclear testing. Nations resume testing, or they test nuclear weapons when they feel it’s in their national security interests to do so, but the government of India has had a very unusual profile in this regard because it took over two decades between its nuclear tests.
Serious students of the Indian nuclear program, of which there are some in this room, have concluded that economic factors have contributed greatly to this very unusual profile of nuclear testing.
In this deal, the Bush administration has included fuel supply in perpetuity for the government of India. We have promised a fuel bank for the government of India. We have placed no limits on that fuel bank. Under some scenarios, the government of India can acquire sufficient fuel and reserve to withstand whatever penalties the United States or the international community might choose to impose if India resumes testing. Now, this isn’t very smart if it is the goal of the United States government not to help India make the decision to resume nuclear testing.
So what do we do about these provisions of the agreement? The agreement will be a very net negative for nonproliferation, whatever we do, but there are a couple of things that make some sense, at least in my mind. Number one is to reaffirm the consensus rule in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. If one or another country in the Nuclear Suppliers Group goes off on its own, then this system, painstakingly constructed over the decades, will come apart.
We need the consensus rule. We need the consensus rule to apply across the board for every country, for Pakistan, for Israel, for India. We run the risk not only of outliers of the NPT gaining special privileges, but countries that are party to the NPT backing away from their commitments and still receiving the benefits of nuclear commerce. I think the full-scope safeguard provision of the NPT is at risk here. That is down the road. If outliers to the NPT can gain the benefits of nuclear commerce, why should countries that have joined the NPT face stringent requirements for nuclear transactions? We are looking at a world of nuclear hedging here, and the rules are going to be softened not just for India, not just for Pakistan, not just for Israel, but for NPT parties as well.
If we are going to try and hold the line against this serious deterioration of nuclear commerce, we have got to look very closely at this fuel supply assurance that the Bush administration has given. Fuel ought to be supplied to India, if the deal passes, but it should be provided on a contingency basis, on an as-needed basis, and we should not supply India with a fuel bank of sufficient size to make it easier for the government of India to resume nuclear testing. Thank you.
KIMBALL: Thank you very much, Michael. I think we have given you a pretty thorough look at this proposal. It is now time for questions. We will try to respond to your questions as best we can. If you would raise your hand, identify yourself, we will get started. Tell us who you want to address your question to.
QUESTION: I guess this is for all three. Director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has been rather effusive in praising the agreement and characterizing it as bringing India into the mainstream of the nonproliferation international community. The consensus of the speakers here was the opposite. What explains your disagreement with Mr. ElBaradei?
KIMBALL: Well, let me start, and others might elaborate. Mohamed ElBaradei has two hats. Mohamed ElBaradei is responsible for enforcing safeguards. He is also responsible for promoting nuclear energy. In his cryptic statements—and he has not elaborated very much on his rationale behind his generally supportive comments—he has noted that he thinks that it would be useful to bring India into the nonproliferation system in some way or another. It is time that we try to do this.
I think our fundamental disagreement is that this is not the way to do so. India has not yet committed itself to the same kinds of standards and practices that are expected of the other acknowledged nuclear-weapon states, while it is getting exceptions from the rules that non-nuclear-weapon states are subject to. I think that ElBaradei’s statements about this deal contradict his very good and important statements about the need for the nuclear-weapon states to take further steps on disarmament, to end nuclear weapons testing permanently and in a legally binding fashion, and to stop the production of fissile material for weapons purposes.
So I think we have a strong disagreement with him. I think that it is partly because he has a dual mission. He thinks that this might be useful for nuclear safety within India. That may be a worthy cause, but there are ways to assist India with nuclear safety short of this kind of sweetheart deal. That is how I would explain it. I think he is dead long and there is a letter that a number of us wrote to him in July that is on the website of the Arms Control Association that I believe Norm and others signed along with me taking issue with his comments. Norm, did you want to add some thoughts?
WULF: I’ve known Mohamed for some 20-odd years even before he and his agency won the Nobel Peace Prize. I admire and respect him a great deal. I can remember a conversation with him shortly after the 1998 tests, in which he advocated and supported the concept of bringing India into the mainstream; making more of their facilities under safeguards.
I think the difference is that Mohamed has been an international civil servant all of his life. He has never worked in a government. He has never had to worry about commercial pressures that are brought to bear on governments. He has never had to worry about some of the, shall we say, the leadership issues that concern me. He does firmly believe this. I think he is wrong. When we had our discussion in 1998 I told him I thought he was wrong. I still think he is wrong, obviously. But I think he sees part of his job as nuclear energy promotion. Part of his job is more facilities under safeguards. He will get more under this deal.
KIMBALL: Well, to be clear, we have mentioned this in passing in our comments. India has agreed to put eight additional records under safeguards by 2014. From a nonproliferation standpoint, that is almost absolutely meaningless if the rest of India’s nuclear sector is not under safeguards and they continue to produce fissile material for weapons purposes. To say that this brings India into the nuclear nonproliferation mainstream is something of an insult to those who understand what safeguards are really about and what nonproliferation is supposed to be about. That is a factual point that I wish ElBaradei would acknowledge. Are there other questions? Yes, sir. The microphone is coming.
QUESTION: Thank you. I’m Luke Engan from Inside U.S. Trade. I wanted to ask you gentlemen about the prospect of Senate passage during the lame-duck session. Do you see that as a possibility? Why? Have the concerns of members like Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) been addressed? Also, is there time for a conference passage?
KIMBALL: Well, let me start with that. Others may have some thoughts to add. The lame-duck session apparently is going to last some two to three weeks. I haven’t had a conversation with the majority leader or the minority leader, but I understand they are trying to work out some unanimous consent agreement that would bring this up during the lame duck session.
One obvious issue is that if the Senate does not find the time to debate and vote on the various amendments that are going to be offered to the base legislation, the conferees, the House and Senate conferees will have a difficult time finding the time to resolve their differences, and then to bring back the compromise bill to both the House and the Senate before they adjourn at the end of the year.
But my assumption, as I said at the beginning, is that at some point, this legislation will be voted on by the Senate, considered by the full Congress, either this November or December or some time next year. I would agree with Norm Wulf that it would be wise for this Congress to take its time in the sense that it must be very deliberate in understanding the implications. It also should look to see whether India is going to live up to some of the commitments that it should be living up to in the agreement for nuclear cooperation negotiations, and the Indian-IAEA safeguards discussions.
I’ll try to deal with the Ensign issue quickly. I think what you’re referring to is the controversy that lasted throughout August and September about Title II of the bill, which is the implementing legislation for the United States additional protocol agreement regarding safeguards. This is largely a symbolic agreement with the respect to the United States, but this is also something that India has said it would accept as part of this arrangement.
Ensign wanted to make changes and other Republican senators wanted to make changes to the criteria by which the United States might exclude IAEA inspectors from certain U.S. facilities. My understanding is that those concerns have been resolved in a manner that the Democrats and the Republicans agree. However, Ensign, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and other senators could raise objections to the compromised language, which has not formerly been adopted the Senate. That could remain a stumbling block. I would say that there is no reason why the Senate should reject the Title II implementing of legislation for the additional protocol.
QUESTION: So was that addressed in the Foreign Relations report or since that time?
KIMBALL: There is compromise language that has been circulated to offices. It has not been adopted formerly by the Senate. I don’t think the language has officially been filed with the clerk, but I understand that there is a compromise that has more or less been reached, but not yet formerly agreed upon. Norm?
WULF: This might sound like bragging, but I have a point to make. I was the guy that negotiated the additional protocol; first with about 70 other countries in the IAEA over about two years, and then negotiated the U.S. additional protocol with the IAEA. There is probably no one in the United States that would be happier to see that legislation pass than me. The Senate has given its advice and consent and it has been sort of languishing on the Hill ever since then. But it is, at the end of the day, as Daryl said, largely symbolic. I certainly would not support the passage of the implementing legislation for this protocol in exchange for passage of the Indian nuclear deal, particularly such a weak deal as the one that is presently before the Senate.
KIMBALL: Dan?
QUESTION: Hi, Dan Horner from McGraw-Hill Nuclear Publications. You alluded to the difficulties or the time limits on a conference, and given that there seems to be political sentiment now to try to get something passed, wouldn’t the tendency be in the Senate to try to make this bill not deviate too much from the House bill in the interest of having an easier conference. Most of the things that you are proposing here are not in the House bill. So, regardless of whatever merit there may be in the proposal, isn’t this sort of going against what the political indications are about how willing people might be to adopt some of these proposals since some of them go to the core of the deal?
KIMBALL: Well, let me try to address that. Michael, if you would also be prepared to talk about the point you were making about fuel assurances and the importance of this.
There are some things outlined in this letter of November 13 that I think you’re referring to, and some of the things we have discussed here that are not in the House legislation, okay. These are professionals on Capitol Hill. They can work out differences. But I think one thing that we need to understand is that Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate all have concerns in several of these areas. I don’t think there would be any United States senator today, no matter how much they support this deal, who would like to see India conduct a nuclear test explosion and then have this legislation require the United States to continue to supply nuclear fuel to India.
So my point is that we think these are some very common sense proposals. If the House and Senate conferees and the senators take a close look at this and there is a thorough debate, I think that there will be broad support for some these provisions that we have outlined.
For instance, as I mentioned at the outset, Senator Feingold of Wisconsin offered an amendment in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that would require a determination from the president that U.S. civil nuclear trade does not in any way assist or encourage India’s nuclear weapons program. The United States is obligated under Article I of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty not to assist in any way India’s nuclear weapons program.
The president argues that this will not assist India’s nuclear weapons program. If that is true, then the Senate and the House should be able to adopt a provision that requires the president to determine that in order to improve the confidence of the international community that this deal is not otherwise undercutting the nonproliferation system.
My view is that these are some very common sense, rational provisions that put the onus on the United States government to clarify that this deal is not going to have severe proliferation impacts. I think many of these can and will be adopted. Speaking of Senator Feingold, out on the table is a brief statement from Senator Feingold that his staff has brought here, which I have not read yet, but that is on the table. I recommend you take a look at that as you depart.
KREPON: The Senate bill, if it is passed, like the House bill, will continue to have provisions that the Prime Minister of India has labeled as unacceptable. The administration might seek to further water down India’s obligations in conference. I suspect that the public law that emerges, if and when it emerges, will continue to have provisions that the government of India has declared to be unacceptable. Perhaps that language was mere rhetoric, or perhaps, as Norm Wulf has suggested, the government of India will pocket that legislation, say thank you to the Congress, but we continue to have problems, and meanwhile, we are going to do deals with France and Russia.
I personally believe that to be the most likely scenario. But the Congress of the United States will not completely abdicate its nonproliferation principles to do favors for the government of India. So there will be some friction after this bill makes its way through the House and the Senate unless the prime minister of India didn’t mean what he said.
KIMBALL: Spurgeon Keeny, former executive director and president of the Arms Control Association, and then we’ll go back to you, sir.
QUESTION: Spurgeon Keeny. I think the panel has made an overwhelming case that the only proper action for the Senate would be to just say no, and particularly when you take into account that we have demonstrated in the case of Israel that the United States can have very close productive relations with a country without engaging in circumventing the nonproliferation treaty.
Is there anyone in the Senate, or any group, that really is prepared to oppose this? If not, why not? Is there a large number of people following Krepon’s suggestion or are they hiding behind the hope that there will be enough baggage on the agreement that the Indians won’t accept it? Could you just say some more about why has the Senate been stampeded in this action for which there seems to be no logical justification?
WULF: I would like to try part of that. I think there is an event tomorrow hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. U.S. industry thinks this deal is extremely important to their access to that market, and I think that is perhaps the most significant factor. I think the other factor is the India lobby, if I can use that phrase, is, some have suggested, perhaps the second most powerful, shall we say, foreign lobby in the U.S. Congress. The first being Israel or AIPAC.
I think there are a lot of those sorts of reasoning. As I said earlier, India essentially convinced this administration that without our meeting this litmus test of nuclear cooperation, U.S. corporations would not get the same access that others might. I think that is what’s driving it and it’s obviously an issue on which I disagree. I think we could have an extremely productive and profitable corporate relationship with India without selling out our nonproliferation principles.
MIAN: I agree with Ambassador Wulf about the commercial interests and the role of the Indian diaspora in particular. But there are two things that I’d like to add that I think are very important. The first of those is that this administration in particular has thought about India as part of a strategy of dealing with China from the very beginning. Condoleezza Rice wrote about this back in 2000 in a Foreign Affairs article that India is an important element in China’s strategic calculation and it should be part of ours. What we’ve seen now in this nuclear deal was actually flagged in 2004 as part of the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership Agreement signed by the United States and India, in which the United States said that as part of building a strategic partnership with India, we will help India with its civilian nuclear program, its space program, dual-use high technology and missile defense. This is the first deliverable that has come out of that.
I would not be surprised, if this deal goes forward, to see progress on all those other issues also. In 2005, India and the United States actually signed a defense agreement which talked about joint military activities outside the United Nations system; that India would basically join future coalitions of the willing, the possibility of joint military production, military R&D, intelligence sharing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you read the debate that took place in the House on this deal, you had members of the House say, look, we had NATO to fight the Soviets; now we will have India against China.
So those people who aren’t swayed by the commercial interests have bought into this notion that the new Cold War that is coming will be with China. If you’re going to fight a billion Chinese, having a billion Indians on you side would help.
KREPON: Let me just say quickly that if the analysis on this side of the table is correct then we can expect the Congress to have severe second thoughts later.
I also want to say, speaking only for myself, that I am prepared to adjust the rules of nuclear commerce. I’m prepared to do that. I would not do it on a good-guys versus bad-guys basis; I would do it on a criteria-based basis. I would ask the recipients of nuclear commerce, the beneficiaries of the loosening of the rules to pay back into the global nonproliferation system so that the net effect of changing the rules is to strengthen the system.
So I’m not rigid about changing the rules of nuclear commerce. I’m willing to entertain that. But I would ask the beneficiary to put something back into the system, something more than eight power reactors that may or may not be safeguarded in perpetuity, whose fuel may or may not be reprocessed for either additional nuclear power or additional nuclear bombs. This is the deal that the Bush administration struck.
Now, the government of India and many of my Indian colleagues are offended when I say that this is the most benevolent deal an administration has struck since lend/lease because that presumes that India should be treated differently than the other states that have nuclear weapons that are recognized in the NPT. Why should we penalize India, treat it differently than the P-5? That’s a very legitimate argument. I acknowledge that. But we need India to be a stakeholder in this system. We really do. India is a responsible state. It can be part of the solution. But it’s an outlier. It’s one of very few states that hasn’t signed the test ban treaty. It has no obligations, unlike 170-plus other countries with respect to nuclear testing. It’s still producing fissile material for weapons. Very few countries are doing that. We need India to put back something into the system, and it’s not.
KIMBALL: Thanks. That’s a good summary. Yes, sir. Back here.
QUESTION: K.P. Nayar from The Telegraph. From accounts which have come out of the Brazilian meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the more recent one, only four or five countries are actually opposed to the rules of nuclear commerce being changed by the NSG. How do you account for this overwhelming support within the NSG for this deal, especially from countries like Brazil, which you mentioned at the beginning, or Japan, both of which are committed to supporting the deal in joint statements with the Indian government?
KREPON: Let me take the first crack at that. The profit makers, we can understand their support for the deal. Those who chafe against a North/South discriminatory set of practices, we can understand that as well. But I’m not so sure, K.P. that your characterization of the current vote in the NSG is correct. There are some NSG country diplomats in the room. Maybe we could ask them. But, Norm, what’s your sense of this?
WULF: I don’t have any information with respect to the last meeting of the NSG, but I think Michael has said it pretty well as to why so many countries are going along with this. I would go back to my analogy and say they have ministries of trade as well.
KIMBALL: Michael and I have been looking at this issue in detail. There is a very good news report in the current issue of Arms Control Today that Wade Boese, our research director, wrote, which I think is the best summary of what happened at the last NSG meeting. But in response to your assertion that many states are supportive or there are no states that object, remember what Hans Blix said when he was inspecting Iraq and looking for weapons? He reminded us that the absence of evidence that Iraq has dismantled its weapons does not constitute evidence that they have those weapons.
My point is that just because certain states in the NSG have not spoken up and said, we object; we do not like this, does not mean that they support the deal. I think that the view of most of the Nuclear Supplier Group states to date has been that we have not gotten answers to our questions about this arrangement. Norway’s ambassador last year went to India on a visit, delivered to the Indian government a set of questions that came from all the different NSG countries. My understanding is that that set of questions has not been fully answered.
So from the perspective of most NSG states, why should they develop a position, let alone state it publicly, before they have answers to the important questions that they have. What kinds of safeguards will India agree to with IAEA? What are India’s intentions with respect to fissile material production? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that when and if the Senate and the House work out their arrangement on this legislation, when and if the Indians and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna finally get to formal negotiations on a safeguards agreement for these additional civil facilities, and when and if U.S. and India negotiators on the agreement for nuclear cooperation finally work out their substantial differences—there are about six of them that exist today—then NSG states may begin to form clearer views about this. I guess I would hope that many of them would take the position that we’ve taken here today, which is that we believe that the nuclear rules of nuclear supply can be adjusted, but we would like to see India do what it has promised to do, which is to live up to the standards of other responsible nuclear states; that means restrictions on fissile production, binding restrictions on nuclear testing, and becoming a helpful part of the nonproliferation system rather than a continuing irritant in those respects.
We’ll see what the NSG ultimately will do, and also remember it must agree by consensus. That is one thing that is in the legislation in both the House and the Senate that is very important and very good. The president must determine that the NSG has agreed by consensus to necessary changes to its rules to allow the United States and other countries to engage in full civil nuclear commerce with India. We’ll see what happens and I think it could be quite some time.
The mood in this discussion has been somewhat somber, but I think we’ve got to remember that the legislation that’s now before the Senate, which is still not completed, is but the first of four significant hurdles on the way to implementing this deal. I think it is going to take months for all four of those hurdles to be addressed, and they may not be cleared in the final analysis.
So in my view, this is not a slam dunk by any means. There are still a lot of questions, a lot of problems, and I think at the end of the day, many states will start to see the light and there will be changes to the nature of the arrangement.
Ambassador Wulf, and then I think we’ve got time for maybe one last question before we conclude.
WULF: I just wanted to bring up one additional problem as long as we’re talking about the NSG, and that’s the need for a level playing field. Right now the legislation that’s before the Congress has in it essentially a cut off of cooperation should India engage in a test in the future. The question is if we don’t have such a similar requirement in the NSG exception—if there is going to be an exception for India—this then means that the United States law will cut off any U.S. company from having an opportunity to continue trade, but these other NSG members would still be free to go ahead and engage in commerce.
It seems to me that it’s an extremely important part of the entire package. Things that we seek in the NSG are not only an exception but also criteria that must be met and must be applied uniformly by all members.
KIMBALL: Thank you. Yes, we have one last question, and then we will adjourn.
QUESTION: Regarding to the panel, how many more reactors should we put under safeguard or surveillance because India has already put about 67 percent of its reactors under safeguards. With all these apprehensions being sounded, how many do you recommend?
MIAN: There are a number of reactors that India has imported from abroad earlier, and they are required under the terms of the sale to be under safeguard, so India has no choice about those. That’s six taken care of. So out of the ones that India has any choice about as part of this deal, it is basically a 50-50 split. Half of them will go under safeguards; half of them will stay out.
My own position on this—and I’m not speaking on behalf of the International Panel on Fissile Materials—but our recommendation is in the same direction, that like all the other nuclear-weapon states who are party to the NPT, India should stop the production of fissile materials pending the negotiation and entry into force of a fissile material cutoff treaty, which has been part of the U.N. General Assembly resolutions and so on. There is a negotiating mandate and there is machinery that exists for it.
So the question of having any unsafeguarded reactors would no longer apply. India should say, we will join the other nuclear-weapon states and stop the production of fissile material for weapons, and then we will negotiate this treaty, which India says it will support. They should do that. Then this question of how many reactors under safeguards becomes all reactors should be under safeguards because if you’re keeping it outside safeguards, it means that you always have this question of—even if you are not making nuclear weapons material—people thinking you are making nuclear weapons material, and the international community has made it very clear it does not want to see anymore production of nuclear weapons material.
WULF: I would agree 100 percent. The reactors should be under safeguards.
KIMBALL: We’re going to stop there. I want to thank everyone for your attention, and we look forward to speaking with you in the future days and weeks.
END