Great article, Ken!

The thing that amazes me most about the US/India nuke deal is how Bush got totally out-snookered by the Indians regarding the fueling of the Tarapur Nuke. The Nuke was running out of fuel, so as per apparent NPT regs about permitting "emergency" refueling of non-signatory facilities, Bush was asked to expedite a special request for permission to supply the fuel. But unbeknownst to Bush, even while he was still in India, a Russian ship was already en-route to Tarapur with the uranium fuel.

Bush was completely hoodwinked by India on the world stage, but not a single American corporate media organ picked up on it.

From this end (I'm in India) it's clear that India will not accept any amendment to the Bush/Singh agreement which will forfeit their "rights" to conduct nuclear weapons tests, nor will they allow any international inspections of their alledged weapons-producing facilities. So unless the USA Congress is willing to accept Indian nuke tests and no accountability or plant inspections for more than half of India's Nuke plants, then the deal is off.

I suspect that India is refuses to allow the foreign inspections more because of a certain decreptitude of the plants, and because of shoddy maintenance and haphazard storage of nuclear wastes, rather than out of any strategic concerns. There is simply no visible example of precision, regular maintenance in any other large industrial facility anywhere in India, and I suspect that it is much the same inside India's ageing Nukes.

Cheers, Ingmar
www.ingmarlee.com