As Saran heads for US, view from Delhi: key to headway lies in basics

The very emphasis on India’s separation of civil and military nuclear facilities as the key to unlock peaceful atomic energy cooperation between the two countries underlines this reality.

Any attempt in the US to constrain India’s nuclear weapons capability through the backdoor or introduce new conditions in the deal is a non-starter from New Delhi’s point of view, for it runs against the core political objectives of the Indo-US nuclear pact.

For the same reason, the fears in some Indian quarters about ‘‘capping’’ India’s military nuclear capabilities through the current negotiations are being seen as needless.

Once the reality of a continuing Indian military nuclear programme is kept in sight, the contours of a credible separation plan present itself. Under such a plan, India will naturally assure itself of adequate capacity to produce plutonium for military purposes in the coming decades.

It would also follow that India will be free to declare those reactors not part of the future military plutonium production plans as ‘‘civilian’’ and place them under international safeguards.

Contrary to the fears in the US that India will adopt a minimalist approach to nuclear separation, the government has been clear in its mind that larger the number of reactors it keeps on the civilian list, the greater the benefit of international cooperation.

On the second set of issues at play this week — the nature of international safeguards at the civilian facilities India identifies — the government is confident that the political principles of the July 18 pact will point the way forward.

The very notion of separation of military and civilian facilities rules out safeguards agreements of the type the International Atomic Energy Agency enforces on non-nuclear weapon states.

In agreeing to place a declared set of civilian nuclear reactors —both imported and indigenously developed — under IAEA safeguards, India has signalled its commitment to address the non-proliferation concerns of the international community in return for full civilian nuclear energy cooperation.

These concerns relate to preventing a diversion of imported technology and material to the Indian weapons programme and atomic energy activity beyond its borders.

In the past too, India had accepted international safeguards in perpetuity on imported Soviet heavy water in the 1970s, the more recent Russian reactors at Kudankulam, and on future enriched uranium fuel for those reactors.

The safeguard arrangements that India negotiates with the IAEA will have to be one of a kind; after all, the Indo-US nuclear pact is unique. India is the only nation outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that is being offered full civilian nuclear energy cooperation.