Friday, August 18 2006 15:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's detailed assurances on the India-US civil nuclear deal in parliament may have pacified his Left allies the most vocal critic of the deal but some of the country's top experts still nurse anxieties about the ramifications of the agreement on India's strategic autonomy and the future of the deal itself.

"The prime minister has put down public markers in parliament for the first time to judge the success or failure of the nuclear deal. Which is a good thing," Bharat Karnad, strategic expert, told sources

But he added in a grim tone, "Prospects don't look too bright that the US Congress will change the tack. That's the end of the deal assuming the Prime Minister holds on these markers."

"This will not leave us any wiggle room for negotiations," Karnad predicted.

Karnad, a research professor at the Centre for Policy Studies, a New Delhi-based think tank, is convinced that the effect of the prime minister's statement in Rajya Sabha (upper house in parliament) Thursday is going to be negative in the US Congress.

"We are expecting the very people in the US Congress who inserted these conditionalities to remove them. That's unrealistic," he stressed.

Vikram Sood, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RWA), has some "some apprehensions about some aspects of the July 18, 2005 understanding itself." "It's an unequal agreement that will ultimately harm India's nuclear deterrence," Sood opined.

Sood said the prime minister did not address some of the concerns raised by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha, like the airtight separation plan between India's civilian and military nuclear facilities that is applicable to non-nuclear weapon power states and the American assurances on fuel supply for the Tarapur plant.

"Let's see how all these assurances get reflected in the final legislation. More importantly, let's see how the US reacts to the PM's statement," Sood said sceptically.

Sood, along with former heads of India's National Security Council secretariat Satish Chandra and Ajit Doval, former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, had written a joint article in local newspapers terming the nuclear deal as a "disaster" for India.

In a 75-minute address in the Rajya Sabha Thursday, the prime minister made it clear again that India will not accept any deviation from the July 18, 2005 joint statement inked by him and US President George Bush. He stressed that there would be no compromise with India's strategic autonomy, its indigenous nuclear research programme and its independent foreign policy.

He categorically rejected any moratorium on nuclear testing or the production of fissile materials and repudiated a provision in the US nuclear bills that call for an annual certification by the US president on whether or not India has conducted any nuclear tests.

Alluding to some objectionable extra linkages to the nuclear deal in the non-binding section of the House of Representatives bill that passed with an overwhelming majority last month, Sood said that although a non-binding declaration is construed to mean a statement of intent, we should not forget that a declaration of intent by the world's superpower can be very powerful.

K. Subrahmanyam, strategic thinker who heads the government's task force on global strategic developments, finds such scepticism misplaced and said that such anxieties emanate from an inadequate understanding of the American political system and practices.

"There were never any grey areas. If there were any, the prime minister has succeeded in clearing them," Subrahmanyam told sources.

"The US Congress is not Indian Parliament. When they pass the bill, it's like a Christmas tree. They can put any wish on it," Subrahmanyam said, pointing out to the prime minister's example of how China was given the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status by the US.

"When the US gave the MFN status to China, they inserted all sorts of conditionalities like the autonomy of Tibet and the human rights record, but that did not inhibit China from going ahead with it," he said.

Subrahmanyam is confident that the Bush administration will "try its best" to address India's concerns and the outcome of the nuclear deal, which is aimed at providing India the much-needed energy security, will be positive.