It is obvious that the Indo-US agreement on Tarapur signed at the time of Mrs. Gandhi’s visit to Washington has run into trouble. But the reason for it is far from clear. There are only two possibilities. Either the French who have agreed to replace the Americans as suppliers of enriched uranium for the plant have gone back on their word, or the Indian negotiators have messed up things. On the basis of published reports, it is not possible to be sure which in fact is the case. The reports are contradictory, so much so that the same correspondent (and newspaper) has carried different versions of who has said and promised what. In the circumstances, it is only fair that the government make the facts available so that the people can judge whether, as in the case of the Paradip steel project, it has once again been guilty of casualness and rashness.
In one respect, this charge does not need to be established. It is already established. For the dispute over the reprocessing of the used fuel to extract plutonium from it broke out within hours of the signing of the agreement in Washington, with the Indian side asserting that it had the right to go ahead and the US spokesman insisting that India was obliged, as before, to secure Washington’s prior consent. This showed clearly that this issue had not been properly thrashed out. It is doubtless possible to argue that the Americans were as much to blame for this confusion as the Indians. But this argument is in fact not tenable For one thing, we are keen to reprocess the fuel. As such, it was in our interest to have settled this issue before allowing the Americans to pass on to the French their contractual obligation to supply the fuel for Tarapur. For another, the Americans have always insisted that India will not gain the right to reprocess the used uranium rods even if they renege on their commitment to supply the fuel. The US position has been unreasonable and India has consistently contested it. But that could not be said to have clinched the issue in our favour. So when we were signing a new agreement releasing the Americans from their obligation, it was necessary for us to settle the reprocessing issue in clear and unambiguous terms, which we did not.
Now there is the confusion over the terms on which France agreed to step into America’s place as the supplier of enriched uranium. On the strength of reports based largely on briefings by Indian officials, most of us, including this paper, have assumed that the French had agreed to come in under the existing Indo-US agreement of 1963, as modified in 1971, when the task of inspection was handed over by mutual agreement between Washington and New Delhi to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. But is this assumption valid? To be candid, we are no longer quite sure. It is, of course, more important to sort out this problem and bring the French round to our point of view than to establish the facts. But the latter issue is not unimportant. For it is necessary to find out how well or ill the country’s affairs are being managed in respect of such important matters as the future of the nuclear power programme. And what if the French refuse to come round? In that case we would have complicated our relations not only with the United States but also France. Some price this for the ineptitude of our negotiators, none of them, incidentally, a specialist in this matter!
And why this unseemly hurry to conclude the agreement with the US? In a sense, the answer is obvious. On the one hand, Tarapur’s need for fuel is urgent because it has been operating at much less than its full capacity and, on the other, Mrs. Gandhi had rightly come to the conclusion that it was necessary to improve relations with the Reagan administration. And it has been reported that the Americans were also so keen to get the Tarapur problem out of the way that they handed over a draft agreement to the Indian officials who went to Washington ahead of the Prime Minister to finalize the details of the visit. But can all these factors justify the apparent lack of concern for the details? Would it not have sufficed if President Reagan and Mrs. Gandhi had issued a statement expressing the hope that the Tarapur issue would be amicable settled? After all, the Prime Minister went to America in search of a better understanding of India’s problems and approach, and not of specific agreements.