By this time next week, Congress will likely have left Washington for the countdown to Election Day. Before your representative and senators go home, President Bush is urging them to rush through a nuclear cooperation agreement with India allowing that country to resume nuclear testing without facing international sanctions. India has already exploded one nuclear weapon and has refused to join the international agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Urge your members of Congress to oppose any deal with India allowing that country to resume nuclear testing.
Congress could improve relations with India without agreeing to its resumption of nuclear testing, without enabling the Indian government to increase production of nuclear weapons by up to 500 percent. Congress should insist that before the United States signs any nuclear cooperation agreement, India agree to
not produce or test any more nuclear weapons;
sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all nuclear test explosions; and
stop the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium – fissile materials used in the production of nuclear weapons. All five acknowledged nuclear weapons states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have halted production of fissile materials.
Insisting on these safeguards would likely mean that the agreement would be dead for this Congress. A dead agreement would be better than one that undermines efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Friends Committee on National Legislation is a Quaker lobby in the public interest.
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