Govt unveils IAEA agreement

The official version of the India-specific safeguards agreement currently submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says India "may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies." The draft agreement after being available at a Washington based think tanks website for over 24 hours was made available on the Ministry of External Affairs official website an hour ago.

This clause is the only departure from a standard Information Circular 66/Rev 2, that will permit countries in the IAEA to allow India to conclude a safeguards agreement, the first step in operationalising the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement.

The clause is important and will have to be negotiated because IAEA countries will want to know what these ‘corrective measures' will be and how they will be
put into operation. The government of India has told the US it would need
guarantees that fuel supplies would not be interrupted, because it wants to avoid a repeat of the experience in the 1970s and 1990s when, because it carried out tests, the Western nations suspended supply of enriched uranium.