President Bush will be visiting India and Pakistan this week. A major agenda item is a nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India.
The following analysts are available for interviews. (India is 10.5 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.)
M. V. RAMANA
Faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore, India, Ramana is coauthor of the recent article “Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India” in Arms Control Today. He said today: “One carrot that the Bush administration has been offering India is the promise of cooperation on civil nuclear energy (i.e., sales of technology and raw materials). If it goes through, the deal will undermine the nonproliferation and disarmament regime, create the potential for an expansion of the Indian nuclear arsenal that is desired by some hawks, and further enlarge the uneconomical and environmentally unsustainable nuclear energy program.”
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ACHIN VANAIK
Vanaik is coauthor of the book New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament. His most recent article is “The Iran Issue.” He is currently a fellow with the Transnational Institute based in Amsterdam and edited the book Globalization and South Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives. Vanaik helped initiate the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace in India (011-91-11-2651-7814, 011-91-11-2696-8121, cndpindia@gmail.com, http://cndpindia.org) which is protesting Bush’s visit.
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SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
Deputy editor of The Hindu newspaper, Varadarajan can address the nuclear agreement, the evolving strategic partnership between India and the U.S. and its wider implications for the region.
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ROBERT ALVAREZ
Between 1993 and 1999, Alvarez was at the U.S. Energy Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment as well as policy adviser to the Secretary. In 1994 and 1995, he led teams in North Korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials. Alvarez said today: “Beneath the surface of nuclear boosterism and public diplomacy of the India deal with the U.S., are some troubling issues such as … the Bush administration’s unabashed efforts to revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry with an emphasis on establishing a global plutonium market. This is being done through new research and development on plutonium reprocessing; and more ominously, by thwarting the IAEA. In response to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises, the IAEA proposed in the spring of this year a five-year moratorium on the international sale of technologies to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, which was immediately vetoed by the U.S.” Alvarez is currently a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
