Reprocessing request is the first test of nukes-for-mangoes under Obama

[bananas]

Now India is threatening us: "no reactor purchases without reprocessing".
Obama should make it simple - no reprocessing until they commit to arms reductions.
Their arms race with Pakistan is good for no-one and could end in disaster.
"Nukes-for-Mangoes" is one of the worst things from the Bush administration.

Reprocessing request is the first test of nuclear deal under Obama

Siddharth Varadarajan

India, U.S. have till August 2010 to work out ‘arrangements and procedures’
DAE is unwilling to accept any future ambiguity
“India must come up with design of new facility”

New Delhi: India has formally asked the United States to negotiate the “arrangements and procedures” under which American spent nuclear fuel will be reprocessed in the country, presenting the Obama administration with its first test of how committed it is to the India-U.S. nuclear agreement.

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The 123 agreement gives India prior consent to reprocess but stipulates that this right will come into effect only when India establishes a new national facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards and reaches an agreement with the U.S. on “arrangements and procedures under which such reprocessing … will take place in this new facility.”

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Last January, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar explicitly told a delegation of the U.S.-India Business Council — which included many representatives of the American nuclear industry — that there would be no reactor purchases without reprocessing.

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If the State Department’s Bureau of Non-proliferation — likely to be headed by Robert J. Einhorn — plays a role in the process of formulating reprocessing arrangements and procedures, the proposed talks could hit an early roadblock. Mr. Einhorn fiercely opposed the nuclear agreement with India ever since it was first unveiled in 2005.

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