146. Telegram From the Embassy in India to the Department of State1
9991. Subject: Tarapur After. Refs: A) State 145754;2 B) New Delhi 9979.3
1. (C)–Entire text.
2. Summary: The subject of Tarapur came up naturally enough, actually initiated by the PM, toward the end of the conversation reported reftel B. On this subject, as on that reported there, Morarji sticks in private to views known from public utterances. Thus I found no substantive “give” but genuine concern not to let these issues sour Indo-US relations. End summary.
3. If the U.S. breaks its contract on supply for Tarapur, the PM insists that India will no longer be bound by any elements of that contract. This applies both to safeguards and reprocessing. At the same time, he continues to hope that we won’t “dishonor” our supply commitment, and until he is convinced otherwise, he won’t commit himself as to future treatment of U.S. supplied spent fuel, despite, he said, heavy pressures to do so. (We agree not to haggle in this discussion on the relative merits of the NRC’s interpretation of the legal obligations of India as vs. the GOI’s interpretation of ours. The PM believes deeply in the sanctity of contracts, as you know, but he did agree today that any protracted confrontation at that level would be unrewarding and bad for Indo-US relations.)
4. When I suggested that maybe India had no real need to reprocess the Tarapur spent fuel for a number of years to meet its known power requirements and that a statement to that effect—that is, an implied commitment not to reprocess this fuel for say three to five years—might be very helpful in the NRC’s consideration of the current license application and also with the Congress if it had to consider a Presidential Determination on that license, the PM nodded as though with understanding, but replied, “at this time, I can’t say that.”
5. I then raised the question of buy-back. His answer was that India had indicated a readiness for that when it thought it could count on continuing U.S. supply. If he could still count on that, he would at once agree to our buying back the spent fuel. After all, it was costing [Page 395] India a lot to provide for its storage. Then he went on to say that the only need to reprocess this spent fuel was to provide fuel for Tarapur.
6. Somewhat disingenuously [less than 1 line not declassified], I suggested there were after all other possible suppliers and I reminded him of the point that the President had made of that fact in his meeting with Vajpayee.4 The PM’s reply confirmed that Kosygin had made an explicit offer to replace US at Tarapur, but the PM said he hoped not to have to turn either to Russia or any other possible external source. He has, he said, “made a plan to try to make do” through India’s own efforts. In the context, this seemed to me so clearly to mean by reprocessing and refabricating Tarapur spent fuel, that I failed to put that specific question to him.
6. Finally, we talked about preserving the broader US-India relationship whatever might happen at Tarapur. Morarji feels strongly about this—and didn’t hesitate to say that he sees the Soviets trying to undermine this relationship at every turn. For my part, I expressed my conviction that he and our President will then both have to take a very strong lead to get supposedly informed public opinion in each of our countries to stop looking at the issues of US supply of Tarapur and India’s acceptance of full-scope safeguards as the litmus tests of sincerity and good intent between the two countries. Witness the New York Times there, the Times of India here.5 Morarji agreed, but if he remains true to style, I expect the most we can expect of him are occasional laconic assertions, no sort of organized effort to marshal public support.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790259–0885. Confidential; Immediate; Stadis. Sent for information to Bombay.↩
- See Document 144.↩
- See Document 145.↩
- See Document 139.↩
- For an example of opinion pieces in the New York Times that placed the nuclear impasse at the center of Indo-U.S. relations, see “Ban the Bomb in South Asia,” New York Times, April 16, 1979, p. A16. When the New York Times reported on U.S. proposals to facilitate the creation of a nuclear weapons free zone in South Asia (“Curb on Atom Arms in South Asia Urged,” New York Times, May 27, 1979, p. 8), the Times of India responded that the U.S. move “is seen here as a dubious ploy to ignore the unilateral declaration already made by this country and to continue to maintain an artificial parity between India and Pakistan.” (Telegram 9263 from New Delhi, May 29; National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790243–0152)↩