As Jason Motlagh pointed out in a recent WPR piece, the US-India nuclear deal (known as the 123 Agreement) is being held up in India’s parliament by the communist members of Indian PM Manmohan Singh’s governing coalition. There are also some hurdles to be cleared with the IAEA regarding an “uninterrupted supply” clause which India insists on including in its IAEA agreement. Beyond that, the deal has its share of detractors in the non-proliferation community, who worry about its potentially destabilizing impact on the NPT regime. All of which makes it kind of odd to see Senators Biden and Kerry [...]
Earlier this year, the Republic of the Congo became the 183rd state party to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which forbids the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons (CW). In addition, the Indian media recently reported that the Indian government had eliminated over 90 percent of its chemical weapons, suggesting the country should fulfill its requirement to eliminate all its CW by April 2009. While welcome, these developments should not obscure the continuing difficulties facing the CWC as its April 2008 review conference approaches. Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of [...]
This past summer, prior to his sudden departure from office, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh announced a partnership agreement that surpassed the previously established levels of economic and security cooperation between the two countries. The timing of this August roadmap could not have been more perfect, given that 2007 is Japan-India Friendship Year. The new momentum in relations between the world’s largest democracy and its second-largest economy deserves attention, in part because these relations have historically lacked both depth and breadth. Nevertheless, while recent efforts reflect a positive trend toward deeper engagement between Japan [...]
