US Coercion of India against Iran at IAEA |
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Siddharth Varadarajan interviewed by Abbas Edalat (source: CASMII ) Siddharth Varadarajan: Mr. Stephen Rademaker was invited to speak at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, the premier Indian strategic affairs think-tank, which receives the bulk of its budget from the Indian Ministry of Defence. The meeting was on February 15, and the invitation was sent by email only on February 14 to all IDSA members as well as to journalists writing on strategic affairs. I am both a member of the IDSA and a journalist, so I can’t say in what capacity I was invited! Incidentally, an IDSA official told me off the record later that it was the U.S. embassy in Delhi which had approached the Institute and requested it to organise Mr. Rademaker's lecture. AE: Exactly who was present at this meeting? Can you name any IDSA staffwho were present there? Did any one take notes apart from yourself? SV: The Director of IDSA, Mr. Narendra Sisodia was present and chaired the meeting. In all, there were about 20 persons, most of whom were IDSA researchers or members. I am not sure who else took notes but I am sure many did because what Mr. Rademaker said prompted lively and at times heated discussion. AE: What do you think was Rademaker's motivation in being so boastful about coercion of India by the US? SV: Well, he was really stating the obvious, and doing so at a time when he believed the Indian debate had moved on. But there was another reason -- he was trying to tell the Indian audience that the U.S. would make further demands on India. For example, he openly said the US wanted India to join its unilateral sanctions against Iran in the likely event that Russia and China did not back tough UN sanctions. India should abandon its proposed gas pipeline from Iran, he said. India should do all these things if it wanted to be part of the "First World". There was no doubt that he was holding out a threat, from his vantage point as a former senior official of the Bush administration AND (and this is the irony) as a paid lobbyist of the Indian government. His firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, has been retained by the Government of India.
SV: The IDSA does not wish to be drawn into a controversy because of its demi-official status. So no one from there will speak publicly. privately, however, many of its members and researchers have not only confirmed to me the accuracy of the remarks I quoted Mr. Rademaker as making but also communicated their gratitude at my decision to report the event in the Hindu.
SV: His official resume is quite clear: "In 2002, Mr. Rademaker was confirmed by the Senate as an Assistant Secretary of State, and from then until 2006 he headed at various times three bureaus of the Department of State, including the Bureau of Arms Control and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. He directed nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North Korea, as well as the Proliferation Security Initiative. He also led semiannual strategic dialogues with Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, and headed U.S. delegations to numerous international conferences, including the 7th Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2005." AE: Why is the nuclear deal with the US so important for the Government of India to allow itself to be coerced by the US to vote against Iran? This is one of those strategic blunders which undercuts the Government of India's claims to Great Power status for India. A country of India's size should have had the diplomatic elan to open a way for nuclear commerce with the US while at the same time standing up for a rational and dialogue-based approach to the Iran nuclear issue. The two should not be mutually exclusive. India has a right to nuclear energy. And it has a right to have mutually beneficial relations with Iran, a country with which it shares deep cultural, civilisational and strategic interests. In energy terms, nuclear energy -- even if the promised cooperation materialises -- can only be an answer to India's requirements in the long-term. For the short and medium term, India's growth prospects depend more crucially on access to hydrocarbons from a mixed basket of sources, including Iran. Why India should go along and facilitate Washington's drive to confrontation against that country is an abiding mystery. AE: The fact that the US tried to coerce India to vote against Iran inthe IAEA's board is of course well established. In fact, as you know,David C. Mulford the US Ambassador to India is on the record, asreported by the BBC on 26th January 2006 for example, to have warned India that there would be no US-India nuclear deal if India did not vote against Iranat the IAEA board. He was indeed summoned for this remark by the Government of India and reprimanded. So what is so significant about Stephen Rademaker's confession? Why is it any more embarrassing for India and the US compared to the original public remarks by the US Ambassador last year? SV: Well, Rademaker is also our lobbyist now. So people in government are asking, if a guy who's supposed to be working for us speaks like this, what must the guys who are working against us be saying? That is why the Indian government didn’t know how to react to what The Hindu reported. Their knee-jerk response was to get Ambassador Mulford to disown the remarks and even disown Rademaker. But Mulford's denial convinced no one. They then got Robert Blackwill, the former US Ambassador to India, to tell the Times of India in an "exclusive interview" that the US respects India's independence, and that there is no way any one could believe India could be coerced, and that Rademaker had been misquoted. Yeah, right! But again, no one believes these guys. AE: Have any of the parties of the opposition raised the issue in any way in the parliament? If not, why not? SV: The issue may be raised by the Opposition now that parliament is in session. The session opened last week and its time was taken up with the Budget and some other political controversies. But the Iran issue is a live one. AE: Rademaker's confession was revealed by Hindu and Times of India but does not seem to have been reported in any main western media. How do you think this confession can impact on the legitimacy of the two decisions of Governors' Board of the IAEA, first to condemn Iran for non-compliance and then to report Iran's file to the UN Security Council? SV: The biggest challenge to the legitimacy of the Indian vote in September 2005 was the official "Explanation of Vote" provided by the Indian ambassador to the IAEA. Remember, India voted "yes" to a resolution which found Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations and which said Iran's nuclear programme therefore gave rise to questions which were a threat to international peace and security. But the Indian ambassador began his explanation by noting: "The Indian delegation has studied the draft resolution tabled by the EU-3 yesterday. There are elements in the draft which we have difficulty with... [F]inding Iran non-compliant in the context of Article XII-C of the Agency's Statute is not justified. It would also not be accurate to characterize the current situation as a threat to international peace and security.” AE: Do you think other member states of the Governors' Board of the IAEA SV: Undoubtedly. I recently had the occasion to meet a senior delegation from a European member country of the P5+1. Privately, these officials, who deal with Iran, were skeptical about the current US approach but said their government was unable to resist Washington's pressure. If this is the case with a major European power, you can imagine the fate of "lesser" IAEA Board members. AE: Given the US Ambassador's public threats against the Government of India in January 2006, one would have expected Dr Elbradei, the Director General of the IAEA to declare as illegitimate any vote against Iran in the IAEA's Governors' Board on February 4th 2006. Is there not an analogy here with a court of law in which a sentence against the accusedis obtained by coercion of witnesses or jury members? AE: When the Western leaders accuse Iran of concealing its nuclear programme for 18 years, they never make any mention of the systematic US efforts after the Iranian revolution of 1979 to prevent western and non-western governments and companies, in violation of the Article IV ofthe Non-Proliferation Treaty, to collaborate with Iran in developing itscivilian nuclear technology. Has the Governors' Board of the IAEA ever SV: I wrote about the issue of the US denying Iran its rights under the NPT going back to the 1980s in The Hindu on 22 August 2006. AE: What is the consequence of such US abuse of the IAEA for the future of the IAEA and the NPT SV: I believe the US strategy is to so frustrate Iran that the Iranian leadership is trapped into denouncing the IAEA and NPT and walking out of both. Needless to say, the US approach is making more likely, rather than less, the prospects of further nuclear breakout. Proliferation risks must be dealt with through a combination of technical, legal and political fixes. All countries, whether in the NPT or outside it, have the right to pursue a fuel cycle. NPT states must guarantee the cycle is peaceful and IAEA inspections verify the same. The US wants to abrogate that right. Iran is a test case. But there will be others too in the years to come. AE: How should journalists, peace activists and antiwar lawmakers in western countries use Rademaker's confession to oppose the US in using the UN Security Council to obtain a veneer of legitimacy for its war drive against Iran? ---------------------------------------------
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