918 Words Essay on Growing Arms Market around the world

The Bush administration has lost an opportunity to remind New Delhi that some of the top defense firms of America will be keenly bidding for some of the high profile requirements of the Indian defense establishments for Washington very early on in the( Republican administration had made the dramatic departure of offering its top hardware to India.

The present depth and future scope of United States-India defense relationship could not have beer summed up any better than by a top Pentagon official James Clad, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and South East Asia who also happens to b( an avid India watcher.

“The US-India strategic potential is very, very profound,” Clad said. “India is seen as a potential power with global reach. It has been slow in coming. I think it will be slow in coming in the future-but it is steady the trend lines are unmistakable.

As many as 52 US defense corporations, including Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Ratheon, Honeywell and General Electric have set up offices in India, signaling the interest they place on the growing Indian arms market.

“It is about maintaining a type of equilibrium, about accepting India’s rise into a type of maturity and power and prowess. We are coming into something that is naturally there. It is like a seat which is already at the table, and we are sliding into it,” Clad remarked.

However, after four days of “studying” the text of the 123 agreement in the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left parties today rejected it, emphasizing more on its context than on the content of its text. Calling for a Constitutional amendment that would bring international treaties and “certain” bilateral agreements to Parliament for approval, the Left today underlined the growing Indo-US strategic relationship as its key reason for opposing the 123 agreement.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat Said: “The Left parties have consistently held that the nuclear cooperation agreement should not be seen in isolation from the overall strategic tie-up with the United States.” So the Left’s five-page statement largely revolves around the broader Indo-US relationship – what it calls the “US quest to make India its reliable ally in Asia.”

This is a clear departure from the Left’s earlier criticism that the United States is shifting the goalposts as far as the July 18, 2005 statement of the Prime Minister is concerned. The Prime Minister had assured the Left that all assurances he made to the House would be honored in the 123 agreement. In fact, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury, after the PM’s speech in Parliament on August 17, 2006, had said: “The Prime Minister has accepted what we had said on the Indo- US nuclear deal. On each of our concerns, there were categorical assurances.”

Congress leaders said that on August 13, the PM will go back to Parliament to recollect the dozen points he had made last year and match them with the draft 123 agreement to show that it was in sync with the assurances he had given the House. The message to the Left would be: “Do you trust your PM or your ideology to protect the country’s interest?” The ruling combine would then leave it:; to the Left to answer this question with the nation as an audience, said a highly placed government source.”

Total rejection of the deal was unexpected,” said a senior Congress leader. “Don’t tell me the Left failed to see in those documents what many nuclear scientists, who were with the Left until recently, have now praised.”

On the text of the 123 agreement, the main objections of the Left are:

• It denies “cooperation or access in any form whatsoever” to fuel enrichment, reprocessing and heavy-water production technologies.

• “Whether fuel s supply will continue even after the cessation or termination of the agreement solely depends on the US Congress”.

However the 1235 agreement clearly gives India prior consent to reprocess. And the question of reprocessing will come up only when en India sets up a “national facility” for reprocessing- Regarding technology for reprocessing and enrichment, the US doesn’t give such technology to any country as part of its policy.

But the Left parties, harping on their fundamental opposition to the Indo-US relationship called upon the Government not to “proceed further with the operational sing of the agreement” and demanded a review of the “strategic aspects of Indo-US relations.”

Asked if they vote against the Government if a discussion was held under Article 184, both Karat and CPI’s A B Bardhan said: “We will discuss what needs to be done in Parliament as well as outside later”.

The issue is likely to come up at UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s dinner for UPA constituents and Left allies on Wednesday evening. According to Congress estimates, even as the Left parties continue to criticize the draft 123 agreement, the UPA allies wouldn’t like to be seen with the BJP on this issue.

Meanwhile, protesting against exercises featuring the US, Japan, Australia India and Singapore, the Left parties said they would hold rallies along the entire east coast to mark their opposition. Two major ‘jathas’ (processions), led by Karat and Bardhan will set off from Chennai and Kolkata on Sept 4 to culminate in Vizag five days later to coincide with the naval exercise.

“We will mobilise people on a mass scale. Rallies and meeting will be held at various places,” Karat said. India proposes to host its first-ever multi-nation exercise, involving 25 warships, in the Bay of Bengal from September 4-9.