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France Support Stops with Lobby in NSG

 

France says that it vehemently supports the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and said it will lobby for India with the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) but will not supply nuclear fuel till the NSG has approved the deal. 

French Ambassador Dominique Girard visiting ongoing Indo-French naval exercises said that France “feels that India should have better access to civilian nuclear technology and materials because of its behavior, because of its non-proliferation, and because it is a democracy.” However, he said his country would not take the Russian route to supply nuclear fuel to India.

Russia notified the NSG to supply India “limited” quantity of nuclear fuel for the Tarapur site citing safety reasons. While this route is legal and allowed by NSG, the UN stipulation is that this route would be used only to protect public health and safety. The French say they are committed to trade nuclear fuel with India and that explains the Indo-French nuclear treaty, which is contingent on the Indo-US deal.

The US Congress is actively debating the deal and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran returned from the US after lobbying many key US policy makers. An unnamed official cited in The Washington Post was quoted saying that “ India was greedy” in its initial negotiations with the US balking at suggestions of inspections. The same source said that India wanted to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state.

A recent KPMG study said that India cannot rely on coal in the long term as its supply is dwindling, getting more expensive to retrieve, and its existing mines inefficient.  India is trying to deregulate the coal exploration  and mining through 100% private participation and by foreign direct investment . It is setting up 5 major coal fired power plants to augment this energy deficit. According to Government estimates, India needs USD 30 billion investments in coal mining alone to meet the energy demands. Therefore, the deal is crucial for India ’s economic sustainability. 

Banking on the deal going through, Indian industrial major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has expressed public interest in building, owning, and operating nuclear power plants. L&T entered the energy sector with a policy to open a new hydro-electricity plant every 2 years. India is severely energy deficient and a KPMG study said that India would need an investment of USD 9-10 billion in 5-6 years to meet the increasing energy demand that is expected to growth four times in the next 25 years. This would mean that India would have to build 250,000 megawatts-electrical output of nuclear capacity to meet this demand growth. 

Meanwhile, China and Australia signed a deal for the latter to supply nuclear fuel to the former. Australian Prime Minister John Howard also debunked notions that a China containment strategy was evolving and that it is part of this alliance.  Australia has consistently taken sides with China even when such partiality is not unnecessary almost as if it wants to appear close to China . Indian policy makers do not recognize this pattern of behavior and continue to buy large amount of agricultural products from that country.