Saturday, March 11 2006 11:41 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Debunking criticism of the Indo-US nuclear deal by the non-proliferation lobby, a group of foreign policy experts here have urged Congress to support the pact and warned that failure to implement it would be a 'body blow' to development of strong ties with India.

"Congress should support the agreement to promote US strategic interests, US non-proliferation goals, US energy security and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions leading to global warming," some 25 foreign policy specialists, experts and former senior officials of different US administrations wrote in a letter to Congress.

"Failure to implement it would be a body blow to the development of the strong relationship with India, so important to achieving US goals in Asia and beyond," the signatories said.

Implementation of the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement willadvance objectives of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) by opening the door to India's participation in the global non-proliferation regime, members of Congress were told.

"Congress went beyond the NPT by requiring safeguards on all of a country's nuclear installations as a condition of US civilian nuclear cooperation. This has had consequences that conflict directly with US non-proliferation goals. The United States can sell civilian nuclear reactors to China,which signed the NPT but has supplied nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan.

"At the same time, the United States has barred such sales to India, which did not sign the NPT but has never transferred nuclear technology to others," the experts pointed out to lawmakers.

"We recognise that critics of the agreement have legitimate concerns about possible unintended consequences that cannot be foreseen. On balance, however, we believe that such concerns are less compelling than the clear, tangible, immediate benefits to the non-proliferation regime that will result from the agreement," the experts maintained.

They said "Critics object to the fact that the agreement gives India the freedom to build new military reactors and exempts key research and development facilities with a military potential from safeguards, such as any breeder reactors not classified as civilian."

"Given the magnitude and projected growth of its energy needs, however, India appears likely in its own self-interest to use fast-breeder reactors it may subsequently build for civilian purposes, as its current plans envisage."

The signatories also touched on the critics' assertion that the separation plan under the deal acknowledges the Indian military component of the nuclear programme.

"But this acknowledgement was long-overdue. India has been a de facto nuclear weapons state since 1974, and US policy under two administrations has already given de facto recognition to this reality," the experts said.

Those who signed the letter included Frank Wisner, former American Ambassador to India; Selig Harrison, Convenor and Senior Scholar at the Wilson Centre; Walter Andersen, formerly a senior official at the State Department and now at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University; Karl Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State; and Harold Gould, Scholar at the South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia.