US to propose treaty on nuclear fuel production

WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) The United States, trying to boost an imperiled nuclear deal with India, this week plans to introduce a draft international treaty to halt production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

The US decision represented a concrete move to breathe life into a non-proliferation initiative that has been stalled for years.

But the fate of the proposed treaty -- which officials said does not include verification provisions -- was far from certain and could take years to negotiate.

US officials involved in non-proliferation issues told Reuters the draft would be introduced today by Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

The US-India nuclear deal, which would give New Delhi access to American-made nuclear energy technology for the first time in three decades, has run into serious trouble in New Delhi and Washington, where there is opposition in Congress.

''By putting this draft forward, at least some in the administration think it could have an effect on the congressional debate'' over whether to approve the US-India deal, said one US official who like the others spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment for the record.

One major complaint from American non-proliferation experts is that the agreement does not curb India's ability to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal, including fissile material production, and could spark an arms race in Asia with Pakistan and China.

As part of the deal, India promised last July to support a fissile material cut-off treaty, implying it would accept restraints if others in the international community did too.

But critics said the commitment was of little value because no one had ever proposed a formal draft treaty and debate over how to proceed was deadlocked at the Geneva conference.

Experts were skeptical about the US treaty proposal.

''No one that you need to make this happen is serious about approving anything,'' Henry Sokolski of the Non-proliferation Education Policy Center said of the prospects for enacting the treaty.

Jon Wolfstahl of Center for Strategic and International Studies said putting the draft forward ''would make it harder for US opponents of the India nuclear deal to argue that Washington and New Delhi were fighting this important document.'' But he said the initiative was ''very low risk for the administration because without a verification mechanism, a treaty would be nice to have, but nobody thinks it will have any real impact.'' Arms control advocates have long promoted an agreement to end production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons as central to an overall regime for achieving deep reduction in nuclear arms. But they said it must include provisions to verify that signatory countries are complying.

The Bush administration added to the controversy when it announced in 2004 that while it supported the idea of a treaty, it opposed verification mechanisms.

Officials said then that because the treaty would allow retention of existing fissile material stockpiles and continued production of fissile material for civilian uses, inspectors would find it difficult to prove cheating.

US officials said this week that the lack of verification provisions likely would be the most contentious issue in the new treaty draft.

The five major nuclear weapons states -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- already have informally stopped producing fissile material for weapons. Experts say the most crucial participants in a cutoff treaty would be India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, which are either known to or presumed to have nuclear weapons.

Reuters SK GC0429