Using The Sledgehammer

In an effort to tighten the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Clinton Administration officials have slapped export curbs on a leading Indian electronics firm, the Bangalore-based Bharat Electronics Limited, because it suspects BEL is clandestinely contributing to India's missile development programme.

Eileen Albanese, director, Office of Exporters Services in the Department of Commerce, said the US had taken the action because of concerns that BEL was involved in activities which might contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to curbing BEL, dozens of other Indian public sector and private sector firms are on a Department of Commerce watchlist for their alleged role in enhancing India's missile programme. These firms include Bharat Dynamics, Bharat Heavy Plates and Vessels, Hindustan Machine Tools, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Godrej and Boyce, Walchandnagar, Larsen and Toubro as well as academic institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Prof G. Padmanaban, director, Indian Institute of Science, doesn't deny working with the department of space and importing components from the US. But, he says, this has been happening for 15 years. "Our entire research programme could get affected by the curbs. This is an exaggerated response by a country that boasts of academic freedom and stand for original research. They are using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. How can they do this to developing country?"

Padmanaban says a substantial amount of components are imported from the US. But he is not averse to looking homewards. "When the US refused to sell us the Cray Computer, we assembled it on our own and now we have one of the best computer centres in the country."

The names are drawn from a list of 96 'suspects' monitored from a private think-tank's database subscribed to by the Department of Commerce and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s non-proliferation unit). The private thinktank is a Washington DC-based research organisation known as the Wisconsin project on Nuclear Arms Control.

According to Department of Commerce officials, the export restrictions on BEL are not tantamount to actual sanctions but will require US electronics manufacturers to subject themselves to individual licence review and additional scrutiny by the Departments of Commerce, State and Defence for all items sold to BEL. Defaulters could be hit with stiff penalties, which might include suspension or revocation of export licences.

In Bangalore, V.K. Koshy, BEL's chairman and managing director, said the though he had not received any "official intimation from the US or our suppliers about the curbs", he would advise suppliers to seek export licences. But he is certain that such restrictions would not hamper BEL's agenda: "We will look for alternate sources. It is not as if we will stop our activities just because the US won't give us the components," he added.

BEL apart, the only other foreign institution his with similar export curbs is Israel's Ben Gurion University, which was barred in February against buying high-performance computers without a licence review. Ben Gurion University denies it is involved with Israel's nuclear project in any way, but US intelligence agencies claim it shares its faculty with Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear research centre, thus making it a suspect.

Prof. Gary Milhollin, who heads the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Says BEL manufactures electronics for rockets and launch vehicles used by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The US slapped sanctions on ISRO and the Russian Space Agency, Glavkosmos, in 1992 because of the latter's sale of rocket boosters to ISRO, which, according to Washington, had been used in India's missile programme under the guise of Space Launch Vehicles (SLVS).

Ian Baird, deputy assistant secretary for export enforcements at the Department of Commerce, said BELL was being cited for "support of proliferation activities in India". Baird told The Journal of Commerce, a trade newspaper, that "India has a very active missile programme and a potential nuclear programme".

The US looks askance at India, Israel and Pakistan because they possess nuclear weapons outside of the nuclear five -US, Russia, France, Britain, China-and because they have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India considers the NPT discriminatory and Pakistan has said it will not sign until India does so. India and Pakistan are not members of the MTCR either.

Milhollin believes BEL's blacklisting was long overdue: "These guys make the electronic brains of the guidance systems for the Indian rocket and missile programme." He added that the technology is slipped back and forth from civilian and military applications within ISRO. According to Milhollin, BEL would not have a problem importing non-dual use technology items, such as a Coke machine, but if there was suspicion that it was trying to import sophisticated technology that might be used to aid India's missile programme, such as a powerful oscilloscope, it would be "prohibited".

Although there was no sale or procurement of any particular component that triggered the action against BEL, a Commerce Department source said the action came about "because of sufficient proof" -- from buying orders, licences and invoices.

AN Indian Embassy official said he was "dismayed" by the action. "This is completely unwarranted. BEL has done nothing illegal." The official explained that the firm has been procuring components such as resistance capacitors and IC connectors from US companies for over 25 years.

A source in BEL, which has an office in New York, told 바카라: "Our buying methods have always been very transparent. We deny that we have anything to do with developing unclear weapons. We don't know where these suspicions are coming from or where they are likely to lead."

In its round-up of proliferation activities around the world, the Pentagon recently reported that India "heavily used technological assistance and parts from Western firms" in developing its short-range Prithvi and medium-range Agni missiles. According to the Pentagon, India could easily convert its SLVS into intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS). The Pentagon acknowledged that India had thus far showed no signs of doing so although it has developed guidance sets and warheads that could be very quickly fitted on to these ICBMS.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies like the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) are said to have lists with hundreds of names of companies as well as official and semi-official entities in several countries that are involved in diverting dual-use technology to nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

US agencies have their own reasons for not making these lists public because they fear a negative fallout ranging from intelligence gathering to diplomatic problems.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, an administration source said that the public naming of BEL would "no doubt lead to yet another round of diplomatic squabbling between New Delhi and Washington. It also comes at a time when India has been asking Washington to relax restrictions on export of dual-technology items."

The source added that the US "has always had doubts about India's intentions", ever since the time-more than two decades ago-that it refused to supply New Delhi with spare parts for its American-built Tarapur nuclear reactor. Those same doubts have continued over the years through other controversies about ISRO and Washington's refusal to allow Cray to export a second supercomputer to India.

The source acknowledged that-in the case of the supercomputer-after Washington refused to allow its export, New Delhi went right ahead and developed its own supercomputers and participated in various export fairs, including a big one in Las Vegas, Nevada, a year ago where it exhibited Indian-made supercomputers and claimed they were equivalent to or better than the American models.