Their campaign is starting now. It’s time to let your senators know how you feel about selling nuclear technology to India. It’s far from a done deal; we can stop this!
State Dept. Official Pushes Nuclear Deal
Signaling a tough campaign, a top Bush administration official urged Congress on Wednesday to approve a landmark plan to share nuclear technology with India.
“India can be trusted,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said.
Critics, including former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., are skeptical of the agreement reached March 2 by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.
It requires Congress to exempt India from U.S. laws that restrict trade with countries, such as India, that have not submitted to full nuclear inspections.
Among concerns raised by Nunn, who played a leading role on military issues in Congress, were that the agreement would promote a regional arms race with China and Pakistan and make it more difficult for the United States to win support for sanctions against such countries as Iran and North Korea. {snip}
Pakistan on Tuesday successfully test-fired a cruise missile that can carry a nuclear warhead and hit targets within a 310-mile range, the army said.
Boy Wonder is getting in on the act:
President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to approve a landmark plan to share nuclear technology with India – a deal that could be a tough sell to lawmakers. {snip}
Legislation to implement the plan was introduced last week. Burns said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would testify in support of the measure.
Also, two assistant secretaries of state, Richard Boucher and Stephen Rademaker, were sent to Vienna to promote the plan with the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an assembly of 35 nations that export nuclear technology.
Make no mistake what kind of world Bush’s non-non-nuclear proliferation policies are creating:
North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North’s official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.
“As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike,” the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. “Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.” {snip}
The accord [with India] was reached even though New Delhi has not signed the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. North Korea has withdrawn from the treaty and condemned the United States for giving India “preferential” treatment.
“We have built nuclear weapons for no other purpose than to counter U.S. nuclear threats,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. link
What Now? The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is Dying:
It is absurd to believe that we can have an arrangement whereby some states acquire and continue to develop these weapons while others are punished with war for doing the same thing on a miniscule scale. This logic of the NPT in practice is to endorse double standards of the worst possible sort. It would have been treated as absurd if such an approach had been taken with respect to the treaties renouncing the right to develop or possess chemical and biological weapons. Even though some states had huge stockpiles of these weapons, the treaties were based on the equality of obligations binding on all states. Why should nuclear weapons be treated differently?
