The 123 Agreement is being tipped as the most important deal ever to India.

The reason being it is so ambitious in scope. It seeks to restore, with honour, India’s

right to access its nuclear requirement in the international community.

When functional, India would get access not only to nuclear power reactors, but banned ‘dual use’ technologies useful for its space, medicine and biotech programmes. The

123 Agreement will end three decades of international technology apartheid of which India has been a victim.

Since the US led the the nuclear ban on India after its ‘peaceful nuclear experiment’ of

1974, the US as the world’s major power, had to take the initiative to restore India to the international nuclear regime. To help India US first changed it own laws, which barred it from any nuclear cooperation with a country like India, a non-NPT member with an atomic weapons programme. The law to get a waiver from its own Houses of congress was what is known as Hyde Act. The Hyde act is a domestic US law which has some prescriptive and some binding clauses on the US administration. However in NO WAY IT IS BINDING ON INDIA.

Having got the waiver, Indian and American officials had to negotiate a Bilateral Agreement, known as the 123 Agreement, because Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy of 1954 deals with nuclear cooperation with any foreign country. As with India, US has 123 Agreements with china and others.

This agreement is only for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which is why India had to present a separation plan for its nuclear reactors. Fourteen of its 22 atomic power reactors were designated as civilian. The remaining eight were for its military programme.

In return for placing its civilian reactors under safeguards from the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA), India would be assured of fuel supplies for its civilian reactors. India has long had an atomic energy programme, but very limited quantities of Uranium fuel.

The 123 signed with India is unique in the sense that it takes on board India’s concerns and substantially meets them to the extent that led international critics to claim that India has been given too much.

India ’s concerns I’ll mention in my next article and also the reasons why the left in not acting right.