India
involved in illicit nuclear activities: US think tank
By
P. Parameswaran
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com
03 11 06
A US think tank on Friday questioned India's nuclear non-proliferation
record, saying it had uncovered illicit Indian government nuclear
procurement from Europe that leaked sensitive atomic technology.
US President George W. Bush has used India's so-called untarnished
non-proliferation record as a basis for sealing a civilian nuclear
deal with New Delhi last week.
But the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS),
a private group in Washington, said in a report Friday that it
"has uncovered a well-developed, active, and secret Indian
program to outfit its uranium enrichment program and circumvent
other countries export control efforts."
Uranium enrichment is used as fuel for nuclear reactors but can
-- in highly refined form -- be the fissile core of an atom bomb.
"Indian procurement methods for its nuclear program leak
sensitive nuclear technology," said the report, co-authored
by ISIS President David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector.
When asked by AFP from where the Indian government made the illegal
procurements, Albright said, "Certainly from the supplier
states from Europe and could be from other places too."
He declined however to elaborate. "We sculptured that comment
in the report very carefully," he said.
US and Indian officials claim that New Delhi does not engage in
illicit nuclear procurement and has an exemplary record of preventing
nuclear secrets from falling into the wrong hands.
The ISIS report said that under the direction of Indias Department
of Atomic Energy, the public firm Indian Rare Earths Ltd. of Mumbai
procured sensitive materials and technology for a secret gas centrifuge
uranium enrichment plant outside Mysore in southern India.
Rarely acknowledged by the Indian government as a gas centrifuge
plant, the plant is believed to provide enriched uranium for civil
research reactors, perhaps nuclear weapons, and a fledging naval
reactor program, ISIS said.
"Public information about Indias procurement for (the plant)
is also shrouded in secrecy," according to the report.
On foreign procurement by Indian Rare Earth, ISIS said the firm,
and trading companies procuring on its behalf, did not reveal
that "the end user is an unsafeguarded uranium enrichment
plant."
Its "methods allow a supplier to easily avoid knowing the
true end use of an item and thus the supplier escapes responsibility
for providing a dual-use item to a gas centrifuge plant,"
the report said.
Ironically, it said, Indias gas centrifuge program was procured
through individuals who also played key roles in the illicit nuclear
trading network led by notorious Pakistani nuclear scientist A.
Q. Khan.
"We don't see India like Pakistan but they are not like Japan
neither," Albright told AFP. "There are some serious
issues that India has to wrestle with and certain things it has
to change," he added.
AFP
03 10 06
Copyright
© 2006 AFP. All rights reserved.
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