December 1998 Editorial
Business as Usual
India has developed its nuclear weapon capability taking advantage
of significant assistance from other countries. Notably, western industrialised
countries and Russia have supplied materials, technology and training
assistance since the 1960s. More than development aid to a so-called
Third World country, exporting to India was a welcome source of revenues
for an industry which requires large investments. For a long time the
countries which exported seem to have put their heads in the sand when
it came to India's ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. France, of
course, always had the policy to export to both regionally competing
countries: India and Pakistan, Israel and Iraq... Many countries protested
the Indian nuclear weapons tests. However, the nuclear industry and
the relevant government administrations are very much responsible for
having enabled those tests. The industry sticks to the same old tale:
commercial nuclear technology has nothing to do with the bomb. In Western
states and in Russia, reprocessing was developed in the framework of
nuclear weapons programs. Apart from Japan, Germany and Belgium, the
Western countries which operate or did operate reprocessing plants are
nuclear weapon states. However, these three countries have security
agreements which puts them under the nuclear umbrella of friendly countries.
India, on the contrary, gained from the plutonium industry which others
built on its territory (heavy water plants, reprocessing plants, a fast-breeder
reactor). The technology provided by the West has proved the basis for
a parallel and secret nuclear weapons program. While most western countries
officially disagreed with the tests, so called "civil" nuclear business
with India will no doubt resume sooner or later. And if history is the
guide, the nuclear industry will keep on saying that "civil" plutonium
has nothing to do with the bomb.
Back
to contents 
To
be continued
Want to print this report ? Download
the newsletter in the Pdf format (758 Ko ). 
