Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XIX, South Asia

108. Telegram From the Embassy in India to the Department of State¹

New Delhi, July 17, 1978, 1026Z

10869. Subject: Nuclear Topics: Meeting With PM’s Principal Secretary, V. Shankar. Ref: (A) State 174235;² (B) New Delhi 10669;³ (C) New Delhi 10699.⁴

1. International committee on safeguards. In a meeting late Friday,⁵ Shankar confirmed that the Indian AEC has considered and approved in principle the idea of India promoting the establishment of a high level, independent committee of scientists to examine safeguards questions and make recommendations. This idea was first proposed by PM Desai to PM Callaghan in London in June, and through their High Commissioner here the British have recently given it some further encouragement. The idea was also discussed but not probed very deeply in conversations in the USA between Shankar and Nye.⁶

2. According to Shankar, the committee’s mandate has not yet been formulated in any precise way. Generally the Indians have in mind an examination and resultant proposals directed at “measures necessary to prevent nuclear research and development along peaceful lines being switched to serve military purposes.” Shankar sees this as including but not being limited to the tasks laid down in the non-paper Nye gave him on this subject in Washington.⁷ But India would prefer the committee’s charge to be broader than a consideration of the problems posed to or by India alone. It hopes the committee can somehow find both “universalized solutions” and ones that will not require use of “the hated phrase, full scope safeguards”. At the same time India hopes that this initiative (when launched) will show that it takes seriously the need to deal with the dangers of horizontal proliferation, and in this spirit it is also seen to meet at least part way the first requirement laid down by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Senator Sparkman’s June 21 letter to President Carter.⁸

3. The prospective membership of the committee has grown since the Washington talks. The GOI now envisions a panel of as many as seven, including in addition to India and the USA representatives from the UK, West Germany, France, Japan, and either Brazil or Argentina. The members are envisioned as “independent scientists of high standing, nominated by the governments but not tied to them”. Not much thought seems to have been given yet as to just how such a committee might be put together or how it would be expected to function.

4. The official launch vehicle will probably be a Desai letter to President Carter, possibly with parallel letters to PM Callaghan and Chancellor Schmidt. Shankar recognizes that much more thought needs to be given to defining the committee’s scope and objectives. He hopes that enough of this can be accomplished in the next week or so to enable a draft letter to be put before PM Desai within the next two weeks. (Comment: I have pointed out to Shankar that his description of the committee’s purpose appears to be pointed at finding some new, minimal anti-proliferation arrangements and that we are unlikely to want to take part in anything that might serve to undercut the IAEA or lead to some separate new monitoring system. Shankar agreed those would be undesirable results. He thought they could be avoided and agreed that more attention needed to be given both to the relation of this plan to the IAEA and to a more exact definition of the committee’s mandate before any public launching. There are obvious difficulties for us in the Indian plan as currently phrased; yet, the fact that the GOI seems to be about to put forward a (more or less) conciliatory non-proliferation initiative seems to me to be distinctly encouraging. We probably should not try to do more to shape the proposal at this stage, because that might be construed as trying to take the play away from them, but when they have a fleshed-out proposal to offer, I trust that we shall be prepared to cooperate to the fullest extent possible.)⁹

5. Other nuclear topics: Our discussion ranged over a wide area in addition to the foregoing. Specific noteworthy items were as follows:

(A) CTB: Shankar made clear that there is no question of India signing a CTB that is “discriminatory” or “incomplete”. He confirmed that India would accept one that had a limited term of life and one that did not initially include China and France, but not one which permitted certain levels of testing and hence was “discriminatory” in favor of the nuclear weapons powers.

(B) Alleged Soviet offer: When I queried Shankar about the Times of India’s report of an informal Russian offer to replace US as a supplier to Tarapur (ref. New Delhi 10790),¹⁰ Shankar said emphatically that there had been no such offer. He added that India would neither seek nor countenance such an offer while our contract remained in effect.

(C) Limited term safeguards: Our proposal of a limited time period trial with comprehensive safeguards is a non-starter so far as the GOI is concerned.

(C)[(D)] CIRUS heavy water. Sethna has told the Indian AEC that amounts equivalent to the US heavy water supplied to the CIRUS reactor have already been transferred to Rajasthan and put under safeguards in earlier transfers. I told Shankar that an authoritative statement to this effect would be helpful in view of Senator Glenn’s particular interest in this question as recorded in the June 21 Sparkman letter to President Carter.

(E) Tarapur reprocessing: Whereas Sethna had earlier told Courtney that India would have no need to reprocess Tarapur’s spent fuel for five years or so and that had made buy-back look to be a promising answer to that potential problem (at least in our perspective out here), Sethna has now told the AEC that India has needs that call for reprocessing of this spent fuel to begin “after 1981”—i.e., in 2½ years. Consequently Shankar believes, with reference to the fourth point in the June 21 Sparkman to President letter, that the PM is unlikely to approve a US buy-back of the spent fuel at Tarapur if we have to terminate supply there.

(F) Tarapur reracking costs: Sethna has been still giving the AEC to understand that reracking at Tarapur to meet the storage problem will cost the GOI in the neighborhood of $3 million. Shankar was surprised and unbelieving when I said that for some time my information of GE’s estimates of their costs had been about half that amount, while the most recent GE estimate had indicated that the job could probably be done for under $1 million. (Apparently ours is not the only government in which there is sometimes [less?] than complete candor between certain agencies.)

6. US-Soviet negotiations and the Third World: Shankar expressed concern and at some length over how the Soviets seem always able to lay the blame on US for resisting their “progressive proposals” in such long drawn out negotiations as the CTB, SALT II, and the Indian Ocean talks. Hence delays in bringing negotiations to a successful conclusion seriously weaken our credibility in the Third World. He feels that we may not appreciate how concerned the non-aligned are about these issues. He would like the President to share more fully with the Prime Minister obstacles thrown up by the Russian side that may be accounting for some of these delays. He believes the PM is sufficient a realist to understand and accept the fact when specific strategic considerations limit our capacity to be as forthcoming in negotiating with the USSR as we might otherwise wish. And Shankar believes that the Prime Minister, when armed with such knowledge, can help to advance our interests. “You should utilize the PM in persuading Brezhnev”, was how he put it.

Goheen

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D780292–0918. Confidential; Immediate. Sent for information to Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Islamabad, and London.
2. See footnote 2, Document 106.
3. See footnote 4, Document 106.
4. See Document 106.
5. July 14.
6. No memorandum of conversation of this discussion was found.
7. Not found.
8. Not found. According to the Washington Post, the letter was sent after the Senate vote to approve the continued export of uranium to India. The article quoted Sparkman’s letter: “The executive branch and the Indian government should base their discussions on the anticipation that if full-scope safeguards are not achieved, it is highly unlikely that a waiver allowing continued exports would be acceptable.” (“Senate Panel Warns India On Atom Fuel,” Washington Post, June 21, 1978, p. A16)
9. In a July 24 memorandum, Vance informed Carter of the Indian proposal to set up a high-level committee to examine the issue of nuclear safeguards, noting that “the frame of reference for such a committee is, however, unresolved.” (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Box 20, Evening Reports (State): 7/78)
10. Telegram 10790 from New Delhi, July 14, reported on the July 14 Times of India front-page article about the Soviet Union’s “informal” offer to supply enriched uranium to India, a claim contextualized in terms of the possible discontinuation of U.S.-supplied uranium. The telegram quoted the article’s reference to other potential suppliers, noting “that ‛some encouraging inquiries in this respect were received from the French also.’” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D780291–0623)