National security adviser MK Narayanan (left) with Atomic Energy Commission chief Anil Kakodkar at a news conference in New Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

New Delhi, July 12: The safeguards agreement leaves scope for Delhi pulling its civil nuclear reactors out of international scrutiny if fuel supply stops, atomic energy officials said today.

And some of the vagueness in the draft agreement’s wording, picked on by critics of the deal, actually work to India’s advantage by allowing it wider options and flexibility, they argued.

The officials said how long India would be committed to safeguards on (that is, scrutiny of) its civil nuclear reactors hinges on assured fuel supplies that should last the lifetime of the reactors.

“The perpetuity of safeguards is on the basis of perpetuity of (nuclear fuel) supplies,” said Anil Kakodkar, chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission.

India will need to seek assurances of fuel supplies for the lifetime of reactors when it begins bilateral negotiations for imports from supplier countries.

The safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — the UN nuclear watchdog — allows India to take “corrective actions” if fuel supplies are disrupted. But some former nuclear scientists have criticised the agreement, arguing that it does not spell out what corrective actions Delhi can take.

Kakodkar and Ravi Grover, India’s chief nuclear negotiator, however, today indicated that the text deliberately left this unspecified.

“The corrective measures are (for now) unspecified sovereign actions,” Kakodkar said. They will depend on the nature of the “disturbance or threat to the continued operation of the reactors”, he added.

“We retain wide flexibility and options by not specifying anything,” Grover said.

The officials said India would finalise, at an appropriate time, the list of its nuclear facilities that would be open to safeguards — a system of accounting of nuclear materials to ensure they are not diverted to build nuclear weapons.

Non-proliferation experts in the US have criticised the draft agreement.

The agreement could, depending on how it is interpreted, allow India to cease scrutiny on the ground of fuel supplies being cut off even if that was because Delhi had renewed nuclear testing. At least, so went the argument by Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, and Jayantha Dhanapala, former UN undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs.

“IAEA board members should get clarification before taking a decision and reject any interpretation that is inconsistent with the principle of permanent safeguards over all nuclear materials and facilities,” they said in a report published yesterday.

India has already had experience of offering reactors for safeguards. Delhi’s first two reactors at Tarapur (built in the 1960s), two reactors in Rajasthan, and two Russian-made reactors in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, are under safeguards.

The draft agreement is expected to come up for approval by the IAEA board later this month. After that, Indian officials hope, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group will agree to provide India a “clean exemption”.

That is expected to be followed by a vote in the US Congress to unlock the doors for civilian nuclear trade with India.