The Indo-US Nuclear Deal Plods On

The Public spotlight that was on the Indo-US nuclear deal until it was passed by the US Congress and signed by President Bush into law in December last year has dissipated. But it is now that the real drudge work to hammer out an 123 agreement, getting NSG approval and an India specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA has to be done.

Brahma Chellaney in an op-ed piece titled Long-Maul Exercise in The Asian Age analyses the action that is taking place behind the scenes.

The controversial US-India nuclear deal may not be in the news these days but it quietly continues to ferment new issues. Even as America and its friends persist with their hard sell of the deal, increasing doubts about the wisdom and costs of pushing ahead with it on terms set by the US Congress have gripped the Indian establishment.

The projected timeframe for stitching up the final deal continues to slip. When the agreement-in-principle was unveiled on July 18, 2005, it was sanguinely claimed by both sides that by spring of 2006, the deal would take effect. Then when the Hyde Act was passed, US officials voiced optimism that the final deal would be before Congress by July 2007.

Now Washington has further revised the deadline to late 2007 or early 2008. Even that seems overly optimistic when one bears in mind that after almost 20 months, only the first of the five phases has been completed to clinch the final deal. There is still a long road ahead for the two sides to traverse.

Let’s not forget that the US-China nuclear deal, signed in 1984, took nearly 14 years to come into force, and another nine years thereafter for Beijing to place its first import order for US reactors. The US-India deal, in fact, involves more processes and complicating factors. Long after the original actors involved in the July 18, 2005, accord have faded into history, India would still be grappling with the deal-related issues.

Indeed the deal’s main benefit for India remains the symbolically important message of July 18, 2005 that the United States, reversing a three-decade punitive approach toward India, has embraced it as a “responsible” nuclear state.In other words, India is already savouring the main gain from the deal.

The actual incentive proffered by the US — the lifting of civil nuclear sanctions — is of less significance because high-priced imported commercial power reactors can play only a marginal role in meeting India’s energy needs.

B Raman’s Open Letter to Kasuri

B Raman writes a open letter to Kasuri who called for intelligence co-operation between Indian and Pakistani agencies, recounting the history of the attempted Indo-Pak intelligence co-operation from the 1980s onwards calling it a dialogue of the deaf where the Pakistanis repeatedly stonewall and lie through their teeth even in the face of overwhelming evidence.He ends his letter by summarizing as follows.

You would now understand, I hope, why there is not much enthusiasm in India to the idea of a Joint Mechanism for Counter-Terrorism Co-operation. They say once bitten, twice shy. India has been bitten thrice — after the Shimla talks between Indira Gandhi and Z A Bhutto; after the meetings between Verma and Hamid Gul; and after the meeting between A B Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif at Lahore in February 1999.

Mr Foreign Minister, Pakistan has handed over so many terrorism suspects to the US and other countries. Forget about terrorists. Can you recall even a single instance where Pakistan has handed over even a cattle-lifter to India? Whenever India has asked Pakistan to hand over a terrorist or other criminal, Pakistan’s response has been that India has not been able to produce convincing evidence against him. And whenever India has asked Pakistan to hand over a non-Muslim terrorist, Pakistan’s response has been: ‘Yes, we agree you have good evidence against him, but your information that he is in our territory is wrong.’ The handing-over of the Sikh army deserters is the only instance of such action by Pakistan that I can recall. I cannot understand even today why Gul did it. Was he planning to use them to collect military intelligence from India?

All Pakistan has to do to demonstrate its sincerity is to hand over some of the terrorists from India living in Pakistani territory before the first meeting of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Mechanism. It will have a big impact in India and many sceptics will start supporting the mechanism.

India would do well to heed this lesson of history and dump that nonsense called the joint anti-terrorism institutional mechanism. It too is doomed to suffer the same fate as above.

Gas Pipeline Blown Up by Baloch Rebels

That too in the very area where that accursed pipeline from Iran to India will have to pass through if built.

Quetta, Balochistan: Suspected Baloch militants blew up a gas pipeline near Quetta on Tuesday, cutting supplies to a power plant and several areas, a gas company official said. Gas supplies were cut to four districts near Quetta and a 95 MW city power plant. Supplies might be restored to some areas within 24 hours, Nawaz said. No one was hurt in the early morning blast in the outskirts of Quetta. “They planted explosives under an 18-inch pipeline that blew out a 4-foot piece of the pipe,” said Sheikh Nawaz, general manager of Sui Southern Gas Company.

If that pipeline is built not only will India have sleepless nights worrying about when the Paki goverment will pull the plug on this vital line. One has to also worry about when the Baloch militants will want to use it for some target practice.

Added to that India will have to pay several hundreds of millions of dollars as transit fees to Pakistan. That’s a lot of easy money for Pak to finance its terrorist campaigns against India.

The whole hair brained pipeline deal therefore is a lose-lose bargain all the way and should be scrapped right away, if it has not been already. A very viable alternative to this is to use the sea route since

1) India can then import all the gas it needs from every friggin part of the world including Iran and even Venezuela.

2) The Indian Navy can very much handle anyone who wants to play some mischief along the way.

The Chinese Regime is Nobody’s Friend

The people who get variously excited about the desirability of a so called India-Russia-China Axis should wake up and smell the coffee. The Chinese regime is nobody’s friend.It is a selfish, egotistic, arrogant and paranoid thug bent on getting its own way by hook or crook.

It is like we all know by now is involved in anti-Indian activities upto its ears, plus terrorising and torturing of its own citizens, picking fights with all its neighbours such as Japan, Phillipines, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea. It is stridently anti-American ofcourse even though it needs American wallets to buy its cheap, shoddy goods produced by forced prison labour or workers forced to work in slavish conditions without any rights to form labour unions to fight for their cause. It is also deeply involved in an organ harvesting scam selling organs of prisoners executed without a proper trial( Hello! Amnesty, HRW, UN, anyone listening?).

And what about Russia? Well China long had a boundary dispute with Russia, which it found in its interest to “solve” in 1997. But it was always clear to everyone that the Chinese regime greedily eyes the vast expanses of the sparsely populated Russian Far east rich in natural resources and ofcourse more land for its exploding population to settle.

Chinese Government Censors the “Chinese Government”

The Chinese government’s paranoia has reached such a crescendo that it is now seeing enemies behind every curtain, under every bed, inside every book and even in innocous search engine terms such as “Mao Zedong”, “Zhu Ronji” and even the “Chinese government” itself.

CHINA—The phrase “Chinese government” has been censored on China’s official Web sites. If one searches for “central government of the People’s Republic of China” on the Best Tone 114 Web site (China Telecom’s Internet phone service and information platform), one gets: “Sensitive phrase: [we] can only provide news search service.” An Internet user from China told the reporter that even “Mao Zedong” is listed as “illegal information” in some of China’s search engines.

On the Best Tone 114 Web site, not only is “central government of the People’s Republic of China” censored, but “democracy” and “National People’s Congress” are also sensitive information. Zhou Guoqiang, an Internet user from Beijing, said he often comes across such disconcerting situations.

Zhou said, “When you search ‘Mao Zedong,’ ‘Zhu Rongji’ [China’s previous premier], and ‘Wen Jiabao’ [China’s current premier], many Internet search engines will tell you these are illegal phrases. Some chat Web sites won’t even let you key in these phrases.”

One would like to ask the Indian diplomatic establishment that is so keen on pursuing the so called “Confidence Building measures” with the “Chinese Government” that what kind of confidence building process can one establish with such a paranoid bunch of tyrants and mass murderers who are so afraid of their own shadows.

Fang Jue, a commentator on China issues who currently resides in the U.S., said, “Censoring the phrase ‘Chinese government’ tells people that government control over the media is way too much. Internet control in China blocks all phrases that can possibly lead the people to ponder democracy, freedom, and human rights. The range of control is going too far. They are blocking every neutral phrase that relates to politics.”

Pak Politicians want Terrorism to Continue in J&K

So much for the “Peace process”. The mainstream Indian media never tires of repeating ad nauseum that the majority of Pakis are peace loving and it is only a “tiny minority” of extremists who are against peace with India. But the reality on the ground looks so very different from their make believe world.

Asserting that any decision on Kashmir must not be made without the approval of Parliament, leaders across Pakistan’s political spectrum have rejected President Pervez Musharraf’s proposals to resolve the vexed issue and asked for continued “jihad” in the state.

A conference on Kashmir, which was attended, among others, by Pakistan Muslim League-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq, General Secretary of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Maulana Fazlur Rehman, President of Pakistan People’s Party Makhdoom Amin Fahim and PoK President Raja Zulqarnain, demanded a discussion of the government’s policies on Kashmir in Parliament.

Participants adopted a resolution rejecting the four-point proposals of Musharraf, which include demilitarisation and joint control of the disputed state by India and Pakistan.

They also demanded that the Kashmir policy be discussed in Parliament in 2008 after the next general elections and that jihad should be continued, the Daily Times reported.

Lets face it. In their culture any compromise or treaty is just Hudna- a mere timeout to rearm and reengage from a stronger position.

And the dichotomy is even more revealing. Our peaceniks shout at the top of their voices all the time that it is the Pakistani Army alone that has a selfish interest in keeping the embers of kashmir issue burning and if Pakistan becomes a democracy there will be peace.

Unfortunately the above stand taken jointly by all the political parties of Pakistan pours cold water on that theory. Even if there are free and fair elections tomorrow it will only put the above worthies in power, nothing is going to change from their end.

It is better we Indians see this situation for what it really is rather than let ourselves get carried away by the shenanigans of the “peace” process.

Indian Foreign Policy: Frozen in Time

Source: : FriendsofTibet.org

Bangladesh giving shelter to militants: BSF

Why did we ever save this ungrateful bunch from the Paki vultures in 1971? And what is stopping our government from teaching them a lesson they should never forget.

SHILLONG: With elections round the corner, Bangladesh has assured safe havens to top northeast militant leaders sheltering in that country and asked them not to move out till the end of the poll process there, a senior officer of BSF said on Saturday.

“All major leaders of the ULFA, ATTF and NLFT (in Bangladesh) have been given a place of safety and asked not to move out till the elections are over,” Jyoti Prakash Sinha, BSF’s Inspector General for the Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland Frontier, said.

National Security Advisor M K Narayanan too said on Friday that ULFA’s leaders were “captives in Bangladesh” and “perhaps acting on the dictates of a foreign power”.

The Chinese Regime’s Brutal Torture of its Own Citizens

The Chinese Communist government merrily goes on torturing and murdering its own citizens with utmost glee while the leftist mainstream media and the “enlightened intellectuals” prefer to look the other way and pretend as if nothing is out of place.

The most “favourite” torture techniques reportedly being practised by the Chinese authorities at present ranges from Burning to Electric Shock to Severe beatings to Sexual Abuse of Illegally detained inmates.

And as of now the Human Rights Mafia is maintaining a deathly silence on this. They are currently busy “protecting” the “Human and legal Rights” of Terrorists, Tyrants and murderers.

And this is the same paranoid Chinese Government which is sought to be appeased by our diplomatic and political establishment.

I agree that how the Chinese government treats or mistreats ill-treats its own people is its internal affair and we as outsiders have no say in the matter and also this should not affect our stance in our bilateral negotiations which should be based solely on our own national interests.

But what we have to keep in mind is that the current regime in Beijing is one of the most paranoid, tyrannical, egotistical, genocidal, maniacal regimes in the History of China. This regime is a freak of nature and does not represent the Chinese people in anyway. It was founded by the Soviet intelligence agencies and funded by it in its initial years. It cheated, murdered, lied and defrauded its way into power and since then it has kept itself there by means of practising sheer terror on the Chinese people. It later got its “respectability” by means of its official hagiographers such as Time Magazine who make sure to put China on its Cover and write sugar puff stories on it, in atleast 50 issues per year.

The bottomline is that we have to keep in mind that we are dealing with an abnormal regime. It lies, cheats and does anything to get its way. We have to be eternally vigilant and make sure that we safeguard our own national interests zealously against this maniac to the north.

We have a long icy winter ahead of us and the sooner we admit this reality to ourselves and stop living in our own make believe “panchsheel” world the better.

p.s- Also read the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party. 

Bush Assures that Certain Provisions are Only “Advisory”

And the dumb Indians will fall for that line.

The telephonic call from Bush came two days after he made it clear that the legislation he signed on Monday did not mean he endorsed all its contents and that he considered certain portions like seeking to restrict fissile material production and transfers of enrichment technology as merely ‘advisory.’

Well Bush, the current US President might mean what he says. But then what is written down and signed on paper is what matters at the end of it all. What if a future administration seeks to rack up the pressure on India to toe their line? Then those very “advisory” provisions could come back to haunt us.

Unfortunately Indian diplomacy always tends to pursue the ‘feel good’ factor rather than hard reality. They have shown this tendency time and time again since the hoary Panchsheel days and it is obvious where this utter disregard for reality and the carelessness towards the fineprint of what they end up signing has led to.

Some people never learn from past blunders.