Senator Hillary Clinton at a reception hosted by hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal in New York to gather support for the Indo-US nuclear deal. (PTI)

Washington, May 18: India may have to stop producing weapons grade uranium and plutonium for military purposes sooner than expected and cap its nuclear arms programme as the price for agreeing to a nuclear deal with America.

This highly controversial possibility emerged today with the Bush administration unexpectedly submitting to the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva a draft treaty to ban the production of fissile material, including uranium and plutonium for military purposes.

The American move has the potential to sound the death-knell for the Indo-US nuclear deal agreed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush.

Stephen Rademaker, acting US assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, said after submitting the Bush administration’s draft Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) to the CD that “our draft treaty has a straightforward scope: it bans, after entry into force, the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”.

India is committed under a joint statement issued after the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House in July last year to “working with the US for the conclusion of a multilateral FMCT”.

India will, therefore, have to stop producing fissile material the moment the CD approves the treaty and it subsequently goes into effect, capping New Delhi’s nuclear weapons programme.

Pakistan, on the other hand, can continue to produce or acquire fissile material from other sources and continue to make newer and more sophisticated nuclear bombs because it has made no commitment to Washington to stop producing such material.

Islamabad may also stay out of the proposed FMCT.

India cannot do so because the nuclear deal with the US and any subsequent approval of the agreement by the multinational Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) ? which controls the global nuclear trade ? will be off if New Delhi shies away from signing the proposed treaty.

By tabling a draft FMCT in Geneva, the Bush administration hopes to diminish opposition in the US Congress to a bill, whose passage is essential for implementing the Indo-US nuclear deal.

An FMCT has been talked about at the United Nations and other non-proliferation fora for decades, but this is the first time that a CD member has submitted such a formal draft treaty for approval.

What is more significant, it is for the first time in more than 15 years that the US has submitted any disarmament proposal to the international community.

What this means is that a primary target of Rademaker's draft is the nuclear deal with India.

US congressional sources acknowledged in background conversations today that Washington’s move to hurriedly table an FMCT draft at this stage was a major concession to American non-proliferationists and an effort to placate members of the American Senate and the House of Representatives to see the nuclear deal past the Congress.

The problem, however, is that India cannot agree to an FMCT without seriously compromising its nuclear weapons programme.

New Delhi can only hope that the draft will get tied up in negotiating knots in Geneva and may take years to be approved.

But, meanwhile, it will fuel suspicion in New Delhi that non-proliferationists within the Bush administration have conspired with their counterparts outside the US government to cap India’s fissile material production and any expansion of its nuclear weapons programme.