India does illicit nuke deals: report

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A US think tank has questioned India's nuclear non-proliferation record, saying it had uncovered illicit Indian Government nuclear procurement from Europe that leaked sensitive atomic technology. US President George W Bush has used India's so-called untarnished non-proliferation record as a basis for sealing a civilian nuclear deal with New Delhi last week. But the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a private group in Washington, said in a report yesterday it "has uncovered a well-developed, active, and secret Indian program to outfit its uranium enrichment program and circumvent other countries' export control efforts".

Uranium enrichment is used as fuel for nuclear reactors but can - in highly refined form - be the fissile core of an atom bomb. "Indian procurement methods for its nuclear program leak sensitive nuclear technology," said the report, co-authored by ISIS President David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector. US and Indian officials say New Delhi does not engage in illicit nuclear procurement and has an exemplary record of preventing nuclear secrets from falling into the wrong hands.

The ISIS report said that under the direction of India's Department of Atomic Energy, the public firm Indian Rare Earths Ltd of Mumbai procured sensitive materials and technology for a secret gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant outside Mysore in southern India. Rarely acknowledged by the Indian Government as a gas centrifuge plant, the plant is believed to provide enriched uranium for civil research reactors, perhaps nuclear weapons, and a fledging naval reactor program, ISIS said.

"Public information about India's procurement for (the plant) is also shrouded in secrecy," according to the report.
On foreign procurement by Indian Rare Earth, ISIS said the firm, and trading companies procuring on its behalf, did not reveal that "the end user is an unsafeguarded uranium enrichment plant". Its methods "allow a supplier to easily avoid knowing the true end use of an item and thus the supplier escapes responsibility for providing a dual-use item to a gas centrifuge plant," the report said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18426487%255E1702,00.html