Instructions

Read the passage to answer the questions that follows passage.
Passage I:

After President George W. Bush signed the United States -India Nuclear Cooperation Bill, he called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to tell him how pleased he was at this development. While welcoming this event, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to tell the President that there remained areas of concern that needed to be addressed during the negotiation of the bilateral agreement (called the 123 agreement, after the relevant clause number in the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954) The US has entered into some twenty-five 123 agreements with various countries, including the one concerning Tarapur. The Tarapur agreement concluded in 1963 was unique in that it guaranteed supplies of enriched uranium fuel from the US for running the Tarapur reactorsfor their entirelife. However,after 1987 the US did not supply fuel saying its domestic legislation under the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Act preventedit from doing so. India argued that Tarapur was an inter-governmental agreement and henceit had to be honoured by the US. Later, US allowed France to supply fuel to India. Subsequently, the USSR (now Russia) and even China supplied fuel for Tarapur. The lesson from the Tarapur episode is that U.S. breached with impunityeven a castiron guarantee it had furnished. Considerable
bitterness grew betweenthe U.S. and India and extended to manyother areas beyond the nuclear one. When India agreed, reluctantly, in March 2006 to put imported reactors under “safeguards in perpetuity’, the US consented to the Indian insistence on assurances of fuel supply. This meant India could build up a stockpile of fuel to tide over disruption in supply and the US and Britain would arrange alternate supplies. The US would agree to work with other countries namely Russia, France, and Britain to arrange alternate supplies. The US legislation, based on the HydeBill, forbids India building up a stockpile of Nuclear fuel. It also obligates U.S. administration to work with other nuclear Supplier Group countries to get them to suspend supplies to India, if the U.S. has done so under someprovision of the Hyde Bill. It is not evident how the U.S. can address the legitimate concerns of India on continued fuel supply, given the boundaries set by the Hyde Bill. With regard to future nuclear tests, the Prime Minister has said, India is only committed to a voluntary moratorium. A moratorium is only a temporary holding off of an activity, conditioned by specific circumstances obtained atthe time when such a declaration was made. It can not be construed as a permanent ban. The Hyde Bill has sought to make the moratorium into a permanent ban. However, there is no such restraint imposed on the US, China, Pakistan or any other country. In bringing up this issue, I do not wish to suggest resumption of tests by India. But Indian can not prevent other countries from carrying out tests. It is, therefore, unacceptable that India forfeits its right to test for all time to come under the agreement with the US Even if the 123 agreement is silent on the issue, Indian negotiators must put this issue on the table. The Hyde Bill calls for suspension ofall cooperation and fuel supplies and even calls for return of all equipment and materials supplies earlier in the event of test. It baffles one how India can return reactor installations that might have been operated a few years, were such a contingency to arise in future. The differences over the definition of “full civilian nuclear cooperation” have been discussed in the media. The Indian understanding was that reprocessing of spent fuel, enrichment of uranium, and production of heavy water also formed part of the term ‘full civilian nuclear cooperation.” In the congressional debate, it has been noted that these were construed by the USto be in the nature of military activites and notcivilian, India’s future plans for thorium utilisation for civil nuclear power depend crucially on reprocessing. Similarly, civil nuclear power units using natural uranium require heavy wateras reactor coolant and moderator. Equally if India were to embark on a sizeable light water reactor programme, it may like to have control on supply ofenriched uranium for economic and supply security reasons. India has technologies of its own in these areas and will develop them further in the years ahead. If the Indo-US agreement moves ahead in the manner its sponsors have speculated, in a few decades from now some 90 per centof the nuclear installations in India would be open to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. In that scenario, how can India reconcile to the embargo from nuclear advanced countries on the export of enrichment, Teprocessing and heavy water technologies. Even if the issue were to be papered over now, it will then look from India’s point of view to have been a very bad bargain.

Question 23

What was the uniqueness of the Tarapur agreement that was concluded in 1963?


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