Carter Pulls One Out

By George J, Church

Despite doubts, the Senate backs uranium sale to India

Jimmy Carter lost his case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was beaten by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the full House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But last week Carter won the final set and with it the match--for the time being at least. The Senate voted 48 to 46 to allow the Administration to sell uranium to India. The skein of defeats and the closeness and bipartisan nature of the final vote in the Senate reflected the complexity of the issue, which involved a clash between principle and pragmatism over the way the U.S. should control the sale of nuclear materials abroad.

The complicated and highly sensitive dealings with India on the use of American uranium began in 1963, when the U.S. agreed to supply fuel for 30 years to an electricity-generating plant at Tarapur, near Bombay, provided that it was used only for peaceful purposes. In 1974 India exploded a nuclear device underground; the New Delhi government insisted that it was not trying to develop a weapon but only experimenting to see how explosions could be used "in the field of mining and earth-moving operations." Skeptical international experts noted that the technology involved in such explosions was the same as that used to make atomic bombs. India convinced U.S. officials that the fuel for the device came from a reactor built with Canadian assistance and had nothing to do with the Tarapur shipments.

In 1978 the Carter Administration, rightly worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons abroad, got Congress to pass a law requiring that the U.S. sell nuclear fuel pragmatism to countries complying with the terms of the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty of 1968. The treaty requires nations without nuclear weapons to open all of their atomic reactors to international inspection to make sure they are not manufacturing ingredients for bombs. India has not signed the treaty, though it had previously agreed to permit inspection of the Tarapur reactor. But India has refused to allow outsiders to visit its other reactors, arguing that while it was devoted to using the atom peacefully, no one was inspecting other nontreaty countries, such as Pakistan, Israel and South Africa, that are believed to be developing weapons in secret.

The conflict between the 1963 contract with India and the restrictions in the 1978 nonproliferation act put the Administration in a quandary: it had to violate one or the other. Carter chose to keep selling the materials to Tarapur, contending that refusing to do so would not stop the spread of atomic bombs--and possibly could allow just the opposite. At least, the Administration argued, the U.S. could be sure that the uranium supplied to Tarapur was not being reprocessed into plutonium for bombs. But if the U.S. did not supply additional fuel, India might regard the 1963 agreement as canceled, close Tarapur as well as its other reactors to inspection, and do whatever it pleased with the spent U.S. uranium already there. Thus a turndown on the sale might speed up rather than head off a nuclear arms race between India and its archenemy Pakistan.

The Administration's other argument was that rejecting the sale might cause India to turn further toward the Soviets--perhaps by buying from them uranium it could not get from the U.S. One of the goals of U.S. diplomacy in the region is to start re-establishing friendly relations with India, the greatest power on a subcontinent that was unsettled by the fall of the Shah in Iran and is threatened by the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan.

The case against sending the the nuclear materials to India was that the sale would make a mockery of the nonproliferation act and U.S. efforts to oppose the spread of nuclear weapons. Warned Ohio's Senator John Glenn, who led the fight against Carter on the floor: "I don't see that any of the countries that have accepted our guidelines would feel obligated to hold on to them now." The vote to help India would also undercut the Administration's campaign to persuade other exporters of nuclear wherewithal, such as France, Switzerland and West Germany, not to sell materials that might be used for weaponry.

Under the terms of the nonproliferation act, sales can go through if approved by the Senate, even though the same proposals had been turned down by the House and the NRC. Fighting for victory, the Administration mounted what both allies and opponents called "a full-court press." Carter himself phoned at least half a dozen wavering Senators from Air Force One while on a campaign flight over the Far West.

New York's Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, a former Ambassador to India, warned that India would take a U.S. refusal to sell uranium as an infringement on its "sovereignty." Asked Illinois' Republican Charles Percy: "Do we want to dim the lights of Bombay and let the Soviets turn them back on?" Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, admitted that the question was a close one to call, but asked: "Isn't the President entitled to the benefit of the doubt?"

In the end, Carter was probably helped by the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq and by the Senate's reluctance during a time of crisis to defeat him on a major issue of foreign policy. The winning majority of 48 was made up of a strange coalition of 31 Democrats and 17 Republicans that mingled hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives.

But the fight is by no means over. To win the showdown, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie promised that only half the 39 tons of uranium would be sent to In dia immediately. Before the second half is shipped, he said, "we will consult with Congress" on what India is doing to as sure the U.S. that the fuel will not be used to make bombs.

India has, according to routine, asked to buy yet an extra 19.8 tons of uranium to be delivered in 1981. Thus the complex and perplexing issue will surely rise again to plague the White House and the Congress next year.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Marcia Gauger/New Deli and Gary Lee/Washington

With reporting by Marcia Gauger, Gary Lee

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