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www.truthout.org/
28 September 2005
INDIA FAILS THE TEST IN IAEA
By J. Sri Raman
It has happened sooner - and in a much worse
manner - than many in India had hoped. The
country has made its most brazen overture thus
far to the George Bush regime. And it has done so
on an issue that pits it against the cause of
world peace and the comity of poor nations.
In these columns before, we talked of the
test that awaited India - and Pakistan - in the
meeting of the board of governors of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in
Vienna on September 19. There was a fair chance
then that India would not fail the test so
ignominiously and immediately. Even Washington
seemed anxious to allay such fears. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice had been so understanding
as to assure India and others that the decision
she wanted the IAEA to take could be deferred.
An IAEA resolution to refer Iran's nuclear
issue to the United Nations Security Council, she
conceded ever so condescendingly, "need not be
passed on September 19 itself."
It was not. The resolution was adopted on
September 22, and the delay made no difference to
either Iran or India. New Delhi was denied the
opportunity even to pretend that it had taken
time for Washington and its Western friends in
the IAEA to tame it. Reports that the Indian
government had decided quite some time earlier to
vote with the US, even while claiming to be an
advocate of "diplomacy" as against a diktat on
the issue, proved remarkably correct.
India was one of the 22 member-states of the
board to vote for the resolution moved by the EU3
(the UK, France and Germany) with the mighty
support of the US. The resolution was clearly for
a referral of Iran to the UN Security Council,
with repercussions that should be easily
comprehensible after the Iraq experience.
The pro-US media pundits in India, who had
mournfully predicted an Indian abstention on the
issue, were pleasantly surprised. It was not only
that India was not one of the 12 abstainers. More
sadly and significantly, the majority of the
abstainers belonged to the developing world and
non-alignment movement. More shamefully, for
those Indians proud of their country's record of
relative independence in international relations,
the abstainers included Pakistan, with the stigma
of a satellite of the US through successive
military regimes in Islamabad.
Pakistan's abstention, actually, was as
un-mysterious as India's support for the
resolution. India's stand had been anticipated
right from the conclusion of the nuclear deal in
July between Bush and India's Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh. Pakistan's stand has followed
from President Pervez Musharraf's failure to
strike a similar deal with Washington.
General Musharraf, in a post-IAEA plaint, has
lamented the US abandonment of an ally of
Afghan-war vintage, accompanied by strategic
partnership with India of the erstwhile "enemy
camp." A similar turnaround may be seen in
relations between India and Iran, whom a concern
over the Taliban threat during the Afghan war
brought together. These, however, are minor
twists of history, compared to the major shift
that India's vote in the IAEA signified.
Predictably, the vote has elicited sharp
political reactions in India. The Left has been
loud and clear in its denunciation of the
government's unwarranted and democratically
unauthorized departure from the country's tested
and proven foreign policy. The Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which had initiated the policy of
"strategic partnership" with the US and had even
extended a welcome to Bush's missile defense
program, has joined the chorus of protest.
Predictably, too, the government has come out
with its counterpropaganda. Its contrived and
contradictory explanations, however, have not
convinced or reassured any of the concerned
quarters.
New Delhi's protestations about its vote as a
"diplomaticî magic wand, waved in Vienna with the
sole purpose of saving Iran from an immediate
wave of Western wrath, have found no takers in
Teheran. From Iran comes, today, the unhappy
tiding that "economic cooperation" with countries
voting for the resolution stands severely
endangered. Some reports, in fact, suggest that
Teheran has already decided to call off the
$5-million-a-day liquefied natural gas (LNG)
export deal with India reached in June.
New Delhi has also asserted that the vote
marked no departure from its non-alignment
policy. Reacting to the resolution in
diplomatically restrained terms, however, NAM
leader and Malaysian member of the IAEA board
Ryma Jamal Hussein said: "... NAM's major
concerns and those of other like-minded states
were not taken on board."
The Singh government has claimed repeatedly
to have bought time for beleaguered Iran. The
movers of the resolution, however, allowed that
country a grace time only until November 2005.
Not many believe in New Delhi's capacity to work
a magical change in US-Iran relations in a mere
month's time.
Few have faith, either, in the capacity of
public opinion and, more importantly, political
pressure from the Left (which backs the Singh
government from outside in order to keep the BJP
out) to reverse the shift in India-US relations.
Another test awaits India - and not Pakistan
this time - in the next IAEA meeting in November.
Will it vote, by implication, for another
Iraq-type violation of international law?
The answer is hardly reassuring. Judging, at
least, by the way India is already conducting
itself as a member of the "nuclear club," a
nuclear-weapon state lecturing Iran and others on
non-proliferation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
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