Washington, DC: Today, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee and co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation, released a statement in reaction to President Bush signing the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation deal.  Rep. Markey voiced strong opposition to the Conference Report of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement on the floor of the House when it passed 10 days ago.  Below is Rep. Markey’s statement on today’s bill signing:

“President Bush said today that this deal was an ‘historic agreement,’ but in fact this deal is an historic mistake.  It has shredded the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; it has emboldened Iran’s nuclear weapons program; and has vastly increased India’s capacity to make nuclear weapons to 40 to 50 nuclear bombs per year from two to three nuclear bombs per year. 

“This is a sad day in the history of efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world.  The bill that President Bush has signed today may well become the death warrant to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. 

“By opening the door to nuclear exports with India, a country that has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, refused to accept full-scope International Atomic Energy Safeguards over all of its nuclear facilities, and violated previous agreements with the U.S. and Canada that previously supplied nuclear technology and materials would be used only for peaceful purposes, the Bush Administration has signaled to the world that the U.S. is abandoning a rules-based approach to nuclear nonproliferation.

“This agreement essentially says that the U.S. reserves the right to create exceptions from the rules that have been in place for the last 30 years governing nuclear trade and commerce.   Other nations are likely to follow the precedent established by this deal.

“This agreement marks an intensifying and dangerously escalating nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Asia.  We are going to rue this day, because the Pakistanis and the Iranians are not going to sit on their hands and allow this to happen. They are going to look at us and they are going to say: These Americans, they preach temperance from a bar stool. They are going to say that this is an era of historic hypocrisy, where the United States expects the rest of the world to listen to us when we tell them that they should not pursue nuclear weapons, while we selectively grant exceptions to countries that never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in the first place.”