The landmark India-US civil nuclear deal was \u201cdead at the very beginning\u201d as it was signed without ground work, a former top Republican Senator has alleged, describing the agreement as more of an \u201carms deal\u201d for American defence manufacturing companies.<\/p>\n
Former Senator Larry Pressler, who has served as chairman of the US Senate\u2019s Arms Control Subcommittee, told a Washington audience that the deal was much-praised \u201cbut there is no chance of it being implemented as the liability issues have not been addressed and it has not been worked through.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that the India-US civil nuclear deal \u201cwas dead at the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressler said that there was \u201cno groundwork done\u201d in India or the US on the civil nuclear deal.<\/p>\n
The India-US nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in October 2008, ending India\u2019s isolation by the West in the nuclear and space arena. The deal has given a significant boost to India\u2019s nuclear energy production.<\/p>\n
Pressler was speaking at an event organised by The Hudson Institute, a top American think-tank, to discuss his latest book \u2018Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator\u2019s Quest for Disarmament in a Nuclear Subcontinent\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing to it really. If you look into it, it is more of an arms sale agreement,\u201d he alleged.<\/p>\n
Pressler claimed the then US president Barack Obama\u2019s visit to New Delhi was \u201clargely an arms sale trip\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe then president Obama\u2019s last trip to India was an arms sales trip and the poor people of India have to pay for all of these new arms that their country is buying from the US. This is really one of us but it\u2019s a new friendship we\u2019re told. But we have to be very careful. I\u2019m somewhat critical that India has accepted that on those terms,\u201d the former American Senator said.<\/p>\n
However, Vijay Sazawal, who worked on civil nuclear deal, refuted Pressler\u2019s argument on liability issue of the nuclear deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiability issue has been resolved a long time back. But American companies are still arguing for that. Why? Because they cannot sell the power from a nuclear power plant. American nuclear power plants are expensive. We cannot sell the American reactors have not been sold overseas for decades,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sazawal, who advised both the State Department and the US India Business Council on the civil nuclear deal, said the US is in a position where it cannot be competitive on the global marketplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, there\u2019s always that colonial outlook you beat on country because you cannot tell them the truth that we are not able to sell you at the price that you want. So, US- India nuclear deal indeed is a very noble and a breaking gesture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge for us Americans is to come back in companies and be able to think innovatively so that we can compete on the global marketplace to sell the power from those companies. But yes, it did provide a stepping stone for the other people,\u201d Sazawal said.<\/p>\n
Nuclear power companies in the west, he said at this time do not have adequate structure to actually take benefit of the economies of scale and be productive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The landmark India-US civil nuclear deal was \u201cdead at the very beginning\u201d as it was signed without ground work, a former top Republican Senator has alleged, describing the agreement as more of an \u201carms deal\u201d for American defence manufacturing companies. Former Senator Larry Pressler, who has served as chairman of the US Senate\u2019s Arms Control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8573,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571\/revisions\/8573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}