BHARAT BALLOT 09: BJP ABOUT FACE ON NUCLEAR DEAL?

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NEW DELHI 000816

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/INS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/22/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: BJP ABOUT FACE ON NUCLEAR DEAL?

REF: BHARAT BALLOT 09 SERIES

Classified By: D/Political Counselor Les Viguerie Reasons 1.4 (B, D)


1. (C) Summary: In an interview with the Hindustan Times
newspaper, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani
appears to have walked back some of his party's opposition to
the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal. Instead of finding
knee-jerk fault with the deal, he carefully pointed out the
difficulty of abrogating international agreements. He said
the party, if it returns to power, will examine its position
on the basis of additional information that will become
available to it. Advani reiterated his party's support for
stronger ties with the United States. Although his remarks
on the civil nuclear deal are far from an unambiguous
endorsement, they appear to set the stage for the party to
accept the nuclear deal if it returns to power. This is
something that most political pundits (and many in the BJP)
expect the party to readily do because it was the originator
and the "father" of the deal to begin with, and would have
accepted far less during its regime. The face-saving excuse
that Advani appears to be testing is that a BJP government's
hands would be tied due to legal obligations under an
international agreement. Advani's comments on the deal,
coming during a heated election campaign, could also reflect
a growing recognition on the part of BJP leaders while on the
campaign trail that the civil nuclear deal and the U.S.-India
relationship are popular among the BJP's traditional
constituencies in the urban middle classes. End Summary


2. (U) In an exclusive interview with Hindustan Times
journalist Shekhar Iyer, Bharatiya Janata Party prime
ministerial candidate L.K. Advani was quoted as saying that
since the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal is an international
agreement, he could not commit to abrogating the deal if the
BJP came to power after the parliamentary election.
Portraying it as a major shift in the BJP's position on the
civ-nuke deal, the newspaper carried Advani's comments --
with the headlines "If voted to power, BJP will honor nuke
deal" -- as the lead story in the April 21 edition of the
newspaper. Advani made those comments as part of a broader
interview that focused on the elections. The rest of the
interview was carried in the inside pages of the newspaper.


3. (U) The headlines do not accurately capture what Advani
said to the journalist. When asked whether the BJP would
abrogate the civil nuclear agreement, Advani said:

-- "We realize it is not easy to do so. After all, it is an
international agreement. We will have to look into all
aspects."

-- "Once we are in government, we will obviously get to know
more about the deal and decide accordingly on the basis of
all available facts. We are definitely against India being
subjected to a discriminatory non-proliferation regime."

-- "We will never compromise on our country's interests. But
I cannot say today we will cancel the deal."


4. (U) Lest the party's opposition during the public debate
that lead to the July 22 confidence vote be seen as a
weakness on nuclear issues, Advani sought to reinforce the
BJP's credentials on India's nuclear program by saying: "One
must remember that it was the BJP (as the Jan Sangh) that was
the first to demand that India must have a nuclear deterrent
way back in 1964 after China exploded a device." He drew
attention to the highly popular 1998 Pokhran II nuclear test:
"We took office on March 19 of that year and we conducted
Pokhran II on May 11 - in 39 days.


5. (SBU) Advani also used the opportunity to signal that the
BJP's waffling and fine parsing on the civil nuclear deal
should not reflect adversely on U.S.-India ties in a BJP-led

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administration. He said the BJP always supported strong
relations with the United States and "the six years we were
in office are a testimony to the closeness that developed
between the two countries."


6. (SBU) BJP Spokesman Prakash Javdekar played down the
significance of the Advani comments. He told Poloff "it is a
well known fact that international agreements reached between
two governments could not be over turned or set aside at the
drop of a hat." He said that the BJP had always maintained
that it was uncomfortable with certain provisions of the deal
and not the deal in its entirety. In his view, all that
Advani said was that once the BJP comes to power, it will
have access to all the relevant information on the deal and
will be in a better position to understand it completely. He
continued that if there were any provisions that were grossly
unjust to Indian interests, then the government would seek to
get them modified. He refused to go into details on why the
turn around had happened and said that the media had taken
only this question and highlighted it whereas the entire
interview was much longer and covered a lot of other issues.


7. (SBU) Nalin Kohli, Convenor of BJP's Media Cell, was more
candid and forthright. He told PolOff that the internal
debate over the party's stand on the nuclear deal last year
had caused "a lot of consternation within the BJP." There
were many who thought the BJP had lost ground with the urban
youth due to its stand on the nuclear deal. He saw Advani's
comments as a "course correction" and a reflection of the
dominant view within the party: "there was never any doubt
within the party that once the BJP came to power, they would
seek to rebuild the close relations with the U.S. and the
nuke deal would not be scrapped."


8. (C) Comment: Although Advani's latest remarks on the
civil nuclear deal are far from the unambiguous endorsement
of the civil nuclear deal that the Hindustan Times headlines
painted them out to be, what he said represents a walk back
from the antagonistic position the BJP had taken during the
months-long public debate in India over the deal. Missing
were the declaratory statements finding fault with the deal
that Advani and other BJP leaders had previously used: we
would not like India to be a party to an agreement which is
"unequal"; the deal makes India a "subservient" partner to
the United States; we will "renegotiate" the deal; and will
seek a constitutional amendment so that no international
agreement can occur without the concurrence of parliament.
There were no reference to the deal impinging on India's
right to test or the need to insulate India from the
penalties of the Hyde Act.


9. (C) Comment (continued): Instead, Advani's remarks appear
to set the stage for the party, if it returns to power, to
formally accept the nuclear deal, something many BJP'ers
(privately) and most pundits have said the party would do in
a heartbeat if it could find a face-saving way to do so. The
face-saver that Advani may be testing is that a BJP
government's hands would be tied due to legal obligations
under an international agreement. There will be some
resistance from hardliners such as Arun Shourie, who
genuinely believe that that the agreement hamstrings India's
strategic options, as well as opportunists such as Yashwant
Sinha, who misread politics and painted themselves into a
corner with their overly aggressive public opposition to the
deal. But, such opponents of the deal within the BJP tend to
be ones without independent political bases and could be
overridden by the party leaders who have political
followings. These politicians may be sensing while on the
campaign trail that the civil nuclear deal and the U.S.-India
relationship are popular among the BJP's traditional
constituencies in the urban middle classes.
BURLEIGH