India makes progress in nuclear deals with Canada, Japan

 

by Anna Newby

 

In the last two days, both Canada and Japan have moved forward with civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with India.

 

Yesterday, Canada and India signed a cooperation pact granting India access to Canada’s nuclear industry. The deal was signed after the conclusion of the G-20 summit in Toronto, and represents a shift from suspicious relations to a strategic partnership. Canada halted nuclear cooperation with India in 1974, when India used plutonium from a Canadian reactor to construct a nuclear weapon.

 

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began discussions last year on the deal, which opens the door for Canadian firms to take part in India's $40 billion nuclear energy business over the next decade. Canada is the ninth state with which New Delhi has a civilian nuclear energy pact (the others are France, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Namibia and Britain).

 

The Hindustan Times reports:

 

In India, nuclear energy production is reserved for state-run firms. As such, Canadian firms can only supply equipment and components – this in itself, however, is a large industry.

 

In response to concerns about safeguards, Agence France-Presse reports, Singh said: "There is absolutely no scope whatsoever of the nuclear materials or nuclear equipment in India being used for unintended purposes.” Prime Minister Harper added: "We did engage in extensive negotiations to deal with those issues and the Indian side was very forthcoming with the safeguards we require to have absolute confidence in those kinds of matters.”

 

According to the BBC, the agreement also provides for cooperation in nuclear waste management and radiation safety. Moreover, the two leaders also signed three memoranda of agreement to:

 

Then, today, Indian leaders met with their Japanese counterparts in Tokyo to begin discussing a cooperation agreement paving the way for Japanese technology firms like Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi to bid on reactor-building contracts in India. In addition, the pact would allow non-Japanese firms such as General Electric and France's Areva to use Japanese technologies in their India projects.

 

In a statement, the Japanese foreign ministry said that the two-day talks represent “the first round of negotiations.” The talks mark a shift in Japanese policy: previously, Japan rejected such agreements because of concerns about India's non-membership in the NPT. Last week, Japan’s foreign minister Katsuya Okada said that Japan would urge India to make further efforts in nuclear nonproliferation, asserting that even after the talks start, “Japan will continue to make sure India is abiding to its commitments.”

 

Japanese trade minister Masayuki Naoshima defended the proposed deal several days ago by pointing out that India's use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes “has already been internationally accepted.” The safety of India’s nuclear plants has been called into question, however - Raja Karthikeya contends there is a the safety standards of nuclear power plants are a concern in India, due largely to “mismanagement or neglect of radioactive sources.”  He cites contaminated drinking water and plots to carry out explosions at nuclear plants.

 

The proposed agreement is apparently part of a larger economic growth strategy for Japan. The Wall Street Journal reports:

When the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement was announced in 2005, some critics feared that the agreement would “open the floodgates” for more and perhaps less prudent deals in the future. Dennis M. Gormley and Lawrence Scheinman of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, for example, wrote:

Does the Canadian deal, as well as the pending Japanese one, represent that fears of “floodgates” and “imprudent exports” are becoming a reality? While the “floodgate” analogy seems overstated, it is clear that other states have been following the U.S. lead by seeking out nuclear cooperation agreements with India (and, evidently, Pakistan). The growing club of states that have signed nuclear deals with India signals the continuation of an alarming trend of apparently lax policies towards nuclear states that remain outside the NPT. Although the Bush Administration’s deal with India was, in some sense, meant to “bring India into the nuclear fold,” it has not prompted additional disarmament or nonproliferation measures. Perhaps, however, these deals can be opportunities for progress on arms control efforts: first, if civilian nuclear cooperation deals are premised on “good behavior,” exporting states must demand continued demonstrations of good behavior. This could mean, for instance, strongly discouraging any further expansion of the Indian nuclear arsenal or additional production of fissile material for weapons. Moreover, as William Potter suggests, states could demonstrate that part of the new strategic relationship is strengthening existing commitments to disarmament and nonproliferation (such as making progress towards CTBT ratification).