Siddharth Varadarajan, Associate Editor of The Hindu in New Dehli (and Berkeley journalism school visiting lecturer) writes on his personal blog about the Bush administration’s nuclear agreement with India:

When the Indo-U.S. joint statement on nuclear cooperation was issued on July 18, 2005, three concerns were articulated within India. First, that the deal would hurt the country’s nuclear weapons programme, second, that it would impair the indigenous three-stage nuclear energy and R&D programmes, and third, that it would lead to unwelcome compromises on the foreign policy front.

The text of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement goes some way towards addressing the first two concerns. India’s right to possess and augment its weapons stockpile is preserved, as is its right to test. The costs of testing have been reduced somewhat by envisaging a strategic fuel stockpile that would allow for uninterrupted running of Indian reactors in the event of sanctions. So long as the NSG does not adopt clauses terminating cooperation in the event of an Indian test or withholding components for a safeguarded fuel cycle facility, there would be no real reason to worry about the “robustness” of India’s nuclear deterrent or the future of its three-stage programme. But that still leaves the wider foreign policy concerns unanswered.

Read the full piece here.