US
Coercion Of India Against
Iran At IAEA
By Siddharth Varadarajan
& Abbas Edalat
16 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Abbas Edalat: Can you explain what Stephen Rademaker
actually said in the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA)
meeting on Thursday 15th February 2007 about the US using coercion on
India to vote against Iran in the Governors' Board of the IAEA? Did
he use slides for his talk?
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.
The invitation from IDSA
Director Mr Narendra Sisodia noted that Mr. Rademaker, a "former
Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation,
will be visiting Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and
speaking on "North Korea, Iran and the Emerging Nuclear Order"
… He will also be in a position to respond to questions regarding
Indo-US Nuclear Deal."
Mr. Sisodia enclosed Mr.
Rademaker's resume as well. In his introductory remarks, the IDSA director
noted Mr. rademaker’s previous official affiliations and said
he had left the US government at the end of December 2006 to join Barbour,
Griffith and Rogers.
Mr. Rademaker began his talk
-- which was ostensibly about North Korea and Iran -- with general observations
about how India no longer regarded non-proliferation as a dirty word.
He cited his own experience in high-level discussions with the Indians
and mentioned the July 2005 US-India nuclear deal as a watershed which
helped bring about a major shift in Indian attitudes. One example of
the change of mindset was India's willingness to adopt tough export-control
laws. But, he added: "The best illustration of this is the two
votes India cast against Iran at the IAEA. I am the first person to
admit that the votes were coerced".
Mr. Rademaker noted that
the Congressional hearings on the nuclear deal -- in which a number
of Senators and Congressmen had warned India to cooperate with the U.S.
on Iran -- had played a decisive role in this regard. As for your question
on whether he showed slides, Mr. Rademaker spoke from his own notes
but there was no visual presentation.
AE: Exactly
who was present at this meeting? Can you name any IDSA staff who 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.
AE: How
would it be possible to further substantiate that Rademaker actually
made this confession, apart from your own testimony?
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. Secondly,
I think it is significant that Mr. Rademaker himself, the man at the
centre of the controversy, has neither accused me nor the Hindu of misquoting
him.
AE: What
position did Rademaker have as a US official at the time of the two
crucial votes by India against Iran in the IAEA board? Was he involved
in the US-India negotiations for a nuclear cooperation deal?
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."
He may not have been part
of the inner circle of US officials who negotiated the July 2005 US-India
deal but he had led many US delegations in strategic dialogues with
India, including discussions on nuclear and proliferation issues. In
fact, he was in Delhi in June 2005 for official talks on proliferation
issues and made a public comment even then that India would make a mistake
if it went ahead with the Iran gas pipeline. The Economic Times of June
18, 2005 quoted him as saying: “We think it [the pipeline] would
be a mistake. It would provide oil revenue to Iran that could be the
basis of funding for weapons of mass destruction,’’
As the State Department's
point person for arms control in 2005-2006, Rademaker was fully in the
inter-agency loop in the Beltway evolving strategies to deal with Iran,
one of which was to do what it takes to ensure India sides with the
US in the crucial September 2005 IAEA Board of Governors meeting. If
someone like Rademaker is willing to acknowledge that India's votes
there were "coerced", there can be no doubt that this is an
accurate reflection of the perception within the Bush administration
in those days.
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 in the 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, as reported 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
Iran at 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. Last week Mr. Blackwill
came to Delhi and CNBC's Karan Thapar asked me to join him in a half-hour
debate on the nuclear deal and Iran. I agreed, and so did he. Apparently.
But then his guys must have started doing their homework. My blog's
IP tracker showed a number of hits from Barbour, Griffith and Rogers
the night before the programme was to be recorded. And when I turned
up at the TV studio, the anchorperson informed me that Blackwill wouldn't
be coming to the programme after all as he had a "sore throat".
AE: Has
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.”
Please read that statement
again slowly! So why did India vote for the resolution referring the
Iran file to the UN Security Council (UNSC) when it disagreed with the
two main triggers? Because apparently "more time" has allegedly
been given for the file to be studied at the IAEA Board before sending
it on to the UNSC! The explanation made no sense. The vote made no sense,
when related to the clear belief of India that Iran was not non-compliant.
And yet we voted against Iran, knowing full well the US wanted to take
the matter to the UNSC and thereby remove the IAEA from the driver's
seat.
AE: Do you
think other member states of the Governors' Board of the IAEA were also
put under pressure by the US and its European allies to vote against
Iran?
If so what evidence is there
for such coercion?
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 accused is
obtained by coercion of witnesses or jury members?
SV: I believe
the entire votes in September 2005 and February 2006 were ultra vires
the IAEA Statute. There was simply no justification is sending Iran’s
case to the UNSC. The bigger problem is that the issue has become so
politicised that the IAEA Secretariat itself is unable to function under
objective criteria. I mean, the IAEA inspectors are expected to certify
that Iran has no undeclared nuclear activity. Give the current climate
of politically manipulated hysteria, no IAEA inspector, with the best
of intentions, will find it easy to issue such a certificate even ifn
Iran were to give 200 per cent cooperation. This is the crux of the
matter. Like in Iraq, Iran and the IAEA have been tasked with proving
a negative.
AE: When
the Western leaders accuse Iran of have concealed 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 of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, to collaborate with Iran in developing its civilian nuclear
technology. Has the Governors' Board of the IAEA ever looked into these
US violations when discussing Iran's file?
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. Since the IAEA Statute
commits the agency to provide technical assistance to member states,
a team of experts travelled to Iran to interact with scientists at ENTEC
the Iranian atomic establishment set up in 1974 with French assistance
to work on the fuel cycle. According to an account provided by Mark
Hibbs in Nuclear Fuel, one of the most authoritative newsletters of
the international nuclear industry, the IAEA experts recommended that
the agency assist ENTEC to help their scientists overcome their lack
of practical experience. They also suggested that the IAEA provide expert
services in a number of areas including the fuel cycle. But the promised
IAEA help never materialised. According to Mr. Hibbs: "Sources
said that when in 1983 the recommendations of an IAEA mission to Iran
were passed on to the IAEA's technical cooperation program, the U.S.
government then `directly intervened' to discourage the IAEA from assisting
Iran in production of UO2 and UF6. `We stopped that in its tracks,'
said a former U.S. official." Rebuffed by the IAEA, Iran signed
an agreement with Argentina, only to have Washington force Buenos Aires
to back off in 1992. Five years later, the Clinton administration got
China to abandon its official assistance to Iran on the fuel cycle.
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?
SV: They should publicise his remarks as widely as
possible. The U.S. is pulling out all the stops in its drive to confront
Iran. The world must prevent at all costs the possibility of another
illegal and disastrous war.
Siddharth Varadarajan is Associate Editor of The Hindu,
India's most respected and authoritative English-language newspaper.
His writings on the Iran nuclear issue won the Elizabeth Neuffer memorial
silver medal for excellence in reporting in 2005, a prestigious award
handed out by the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York.
His personal website is
http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/ and he can be reached
at [email protected]