Friday, October 3, 2008

This may be scarier than the Wall Street mess

On Wednesday evening the US Senate may done something worse than pass the $800 billion Wall Street bailout plan.

Inter Press Service offers this report on an agreement ratified by the Senate that allows US companies to sell nuclear technology to India. This despite the fact that India refuses to join the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
With passage of the legislation, Washington will officially end a nuclear embargo on India that it first imposed in retaliation for Delhi's explosion of a nuclear device in 1974.

After the test, Washington helped organise the international "Nuclear Suppliers Group" (NSG) that strictly regulated what nuclear technology its members could provide to "non-nuclear states" that refused to join the NPT and submitted to certain International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. India refused to do so and in 1998 conducted yet another test.

In order for the deal concluded between the U.S. and India last year to be ratified by Congress, the 45-member NSG had to agree to largely exempt India from those terms, essentially lifting the ban on civilian nuclear trade. After a strong lobbying campaign by Washington, the NSG agreed to do so in early September.
India has agreed to open 14 of its civilian reactors to international inspectors. But the deal with the US specifically excludes India's 8 military reactors from the inspection agreement.

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