Defending Nuclear Pact, India Premier Faces Criticism

NEW DELHI, Aug. 13 — Simmering distrust of the United States broke into full-throated protest on Monday in the Indian Parliament, as politicians from the right and left pounced on the government for its landmark nuclear accord with Washington, heckling the prime minister before he could defend it.

The accord, known as the 123 agreement and announced last month, has been regarded as the cornerstone of deepening relations between the world’s largest and oldest democracies. It would allow India to buy nuclear fuel and technology on the world market for its civilian nuclear power plants. The “123” refers to a section of the United States Atomic Energy Act.

India would retain the right to reprocess atomic fuel and to continue to test its nuclear weapons — two items on which New Delhi bargained hard. In exchange, India has agreed to separate its reactors for civilian use, to open them up to inspections and to build a new facility, under international safeguards, for reprocessing.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has defended the deal as good for India’s strategic and economic interests. But as he approached the podium in the lower house of Parliament on Monday afternoon to give his first address since the deal was signed, members of Parliament broke out in howls of protest and pumped their fists. The outburst was perhaps more remarkable for its spectacle than its substance.

The speaker of the house, Somnath Chatterjee, appealed for order. “The country’s prime minister cannot speak,” he ventured. It was in vain.

Many of the members called the nuclear agreement “a betrayal.” They accused the government of being “sycophants” to the United States. “Take it back! Take it back!” they shouted.

The prime minister stood at the podium and finally spoke even as the protests continued. “India is too large and too important a country to have the independence of its foreign policy taken away by any power,” he said. The deal, he argued, does not restrict “India’s right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary.”

Members of his party put on their headphones to hear him speak above the din. At one point in his speech, the parties on the political left, which provide crucial support to the coalition government led by his Congress Party, walked out.

The left has opposed the deal ever since details became public, less over the details of the accord than the principle of closer ties to America. “We do not share the optimism that India can become a great power with the help of the United States,” Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said Saturday.

Anti-Americanism, political observers here say, is a swift way to court votes from the country’s sizable Muslim minority.

Even the conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which led the drive for an American alliance before being voted out of power in 2004, joined the protest. In a tart statement last week, the party pointed out that the Congress Party did not enjoy “a decisive mandate.”

“Same bed, different dreams,” said Naresh Chandra, a retired diplomat who had served as India’s ambassador to the United States under four different prime ministers. “They sense political advantage in this opportunity.”

American critics of the deal have described it as an overly permissive exception for New Delhi, potentially allowing it to continue to advance its nuclear arsenal while refusing to sign the global nonproliferation treaty.

The United States Congress will have to approve it one more time, after India secures the support of the 45 nations that make up the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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