April 27, 2008
India Must Go Ahead with N-deal:
Brajesh Mishra
New Delhi
In a strong endorsement of the nuclear deal with the US, former
national security advisor Brajesh Mishra has said not signing it
would be a "severe loss of face" for India.
"I think we should go ahead with the deal," Mishra told Karan Thapar
in an interview in the CNN-IBN news channel's Devil's Advocate
programme to be broadcast Sunday night.
"Obviously, dual-use technology will not be available to us if we
don't go through with this and, of course, it's a setback. It will
be a severe loss of face for the government of India and for India,"
he said.
His comments on this crucial and controversial issue are extremely
significant.
Mishra was not only the key advisor to the previous government of
the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), now the main opposition, but
he is also regarded as close to former prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).
Asked whether the government should go ahead with the deal even if
the BJP and the Left parties were opposed to it, Mishra said:
"That's a political question... my personal view is that given the
harmful effects of not going ahead, perhaps, we should go ahead and
do it."
He also made it abundantly clear that renegotiating the deal - a
suggestion that has come from the BJP as well as the Left parties -
with the next government in the US after the elections, irrespective
of whether it has a Democrat or a Republican president, would be
very difficult with the possibility of new provisions and clauses
being added to the text.
"It is now, it is now," Mishra said when asked whether this was the
best opportunity for India to get the "most favourable" deal.
Mishra said without mincing his words that losing the nuclear deal,
aimed at reopening the doors of global nuclear commerce for the
country after a gap of three decades, would mean India's
"three-stage programme will suffer a setback".
While in power it was the BJP that had conducted the Pokhran II
nuclear tests in May 1998 and also initiated the three-stage
strategic programme. Mishra's comments can spark off a debate within
the BJP and force it to rethink its stance on the nuclear deal.
Mishra also allayed fears, raised particularly by some BJP leaders,
that the nuclear deal would curtail India's sovereign rights.
"After the talks I've had with various representatives of the
government of India at a fairly high level and some scientists, I'm
convinced that there is not going to be any major impact on the
strategic programme through the deal... this deal doesn't stop us
from continuing our strategic programme," he said.
Asked whether political parties were mistaken in rejecting the
nuclear deal on the grounds that it could stop India from carrying
out further nuclear tests and on the grounds that it could damage
India's nuclear deterrent, Mishra felt it would not.
"Well, so far as these two questions are concerned, in my view we
are not restricted from carrying out tests and, more or less, the
programme we had devised before we left the NDA government is
ongoing."
When asked, "So, in other words, your advice is that this is a deal
we need, let's go for it?" Mishra said: "I think we should go ahead
with this deal. Yes."
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