US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to fly yesterday to India to sign a civilian nuclear deal, a landmark in a budding strategic partnership and a foreign policy win for the administration of US President George W. Bush.
The agreement lifts a ban on civilian nuclear trade imposed after India first conducted a nuclear test explosion in 1974.
The deal “bolsters our partnership with the world’s largest democracy and a growing economic power, and will provide economic and job opportunities for our economy,” she said in a statement ahead of her trip.
Rice will sign the agreement, which governs US-India trade in nuclear know-how, equipment and fuel, during her weekend trip to New Delhi, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Rood said.
The top US diplomat was to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is expected to sign on behalf of his government
But before US firms can reap the benefits, Delhi must sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, and a convention on liability.
“At the government level, we still have work to do in order to implement this,” Rood said.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the US Arms Control Association, said India has also not provided to the IAEA a list of civilian nuclear reactors that would be open for inspections — a step before the safeguards agreement.
The US Chamber of Commerce said that with India’s 34-year nuclear isolation now history, a potential US$150 billion of new investments were expected in terms of new nuclear generating capacity by 2030.
“Companies like GE [General Electric] and Westinghouse, we think, are quite capable of competing there. The other international players, whether they be French or Russian, will be there I’m sure in a substantial margin,” Rood said.
But Kimball said state-backed Russian and French firms may have the edge as they will worry less about liability issues than private US firms, which must wait until India signs the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage.
India wrote a letter of intent last month to do so, Kimball said.
Russian firms have an extra advantage because they are cheaper and India is used to their technology, he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RSS