Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei addressed the Stanford community on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 as part of the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series.

"The Nuclear Future: A Conversation with Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei and Professor Scott D. Sagan," 4:30 p.m., Memorial Auditorium, Stanford University.

Introduction by Professor John W. Etchemendy, Provost, Stanford University.

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization that is part of the United Nations system. He was appointed to the office effective December 1, 1997, and reappointed to a third term in September 2005.

Dr. ElBaradei was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1942. He earned a Bachelor´s degree in Law in 1962 at the University of Cairo, and a Doctorate in International Law at the New York University School of Law in 1974. He began his career in the Egyptian Diplomatic Service in 1964. From 1974 to 1978 he was a special assistant to the Foreign Minister of Egypt. In 1980 he left the Diplomatic Service to join the United Nations and became a senior fellow in charge of the International Law Program at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. From 1981 to 1987 he was also an Adjunct Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law.

In October 2005, Dr. ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts "to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way." In addition, he has received multiple other awards for his work. These include the International Four Freedoms award from the Roosevelt Institute, the James Park Morton Interfaith Award, and the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement. Dr. ElBaradei is also the recipient of a number of honorary degrees and decorations, including a Doctorate of Laws from New York University and the Nile Collar - the highest Egyptian decoration.

Dr. ElBaradei is married to Aida Elkachef, an early childhood teacher. They have a daughter, Laila, a lawyer in private practice, and a son, Mostafa, a studio director with a television network, both of whom live and work in London, England.

PESD fellow Nadeja Victor presented Global Natural Gas Market and Russian Gas Supply Presentation on March 14 during the "market mechanisms of energy market regulation and ways of improving them" roundtable chaired Anantoliy Yanovskiy, Director, Department of Fuel and Energy Complex, Ministry of Industry and Energy, RF. In the meeting of the Group of Eight energy ministers the following days, the chair's statement was the following:

1. G8 Energy Ministers met in Moscow on 15-16 March 2006 in order to discuss the matters of mutual interest related to global energy security.

2. The reliable energy supply plays a key role in development of worlds economies bearing in mind that the well-being, way and quality of life of people directly depend on access to energy.

3. Ministers are aware that the 21st century is sure to witness a significant increase of the global consumption of energy, primarily by dynamically developing economies. Despite the increased presence of alternative sources in the energy mix, the fossil fuels will remain the basis of the world energy industry for at least the first half of the 21st century.

4. Ministers discussed the challenges to the global energy security, issues related to promotion of market efficiency of the fuel and energy sector. We note that meeting energy security challenges will require reliance on market-oriented approaches aimed at increasing energy supply and stemming growth in demand, while encouraging market-based pricing, competition, energy efficiency, and conservation.

5. Ministers point out the importance of further development and strengthening of dialogue among energy producer, transit and consumer countries, including information exchange on the current situation as well as medium- and long-term plans and programmes of development of their respective energy sectors.

6. Ministers confirm our support for appropriate international initiatives such as the Joint Oil Data Initiative aimed at greater accessibility and transparency of data on reserves, demand and supply, stocks and production capacities.

7. Ministers note that a stable future of the international energy sector requires significant investment in the production, transportation and processing of energy resources. We recognize that to attract investment it is essential for countries to have open and favourable investment regimes including stable and predictable regulations, clear tax laws, and efficient administrative procedures as well as fair and reciprocal access to markets along the energy value chain.

8. Ministers favour the implementation of the Action plan adopted last year by our leaders in Gleneagles which includes a wide range of measures to promote innovations, increase energy efficiency and enhance environmental protection.

9. Ministers proceed from the fact that diversification of the energy portfolio in terms of energy sources, suppliers and consumers as well as delivery methods and routes will reduce energy security risks not only for individual countries but for the entire international community. Joint efforts of the G8 and other countries aimed at wider use of renewable and alternative energies, development and implementation of innovative energy technologies and development of low-carbon energy would contribute substantially to the solution of this strategic task. For those countries that wish, wide-scale development of safe and secure nuclear energy is crucial for long-term environmentally sustainable diversification of energy supply.

10. Ministers agree that continued international cooperation to develop the low carbon technologies of the future will be crucial. Facilitating development and deployment of innovative energy technology solutions will have longer term environmental, economic and energy security benefits and be key to a global sustainable energy future.

11. A significant reduction of the gap in energy supply between developed and undersupplied less-developed countries is a major aspect of global energy security.

Stanford, California - If the deal to supply India with nuclear technologies goes through, future generations may remember it for quite different reasons than the debate over nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide, the leading cause of global warming. And India, like most developing countries, has not been anxious to spend money to control its emissions of this and other so- called greenhouse gases.

India is embracing nuclear power for other reasons - because it can help the country solve its chronic failure to supply the electricity needed for a burgeoning economy. But in effect, the deal would marry their interest in power with ours in protecting the planet.

India is growing rapidly. In recent years its economy has swelled at more than 7 percent per year, and many analysts believe it is poised to grow even faster in the coming decade.

The economic growth is feeding a voracious appetite for electricity that India's bankrupt utilities are unable to satisfy. Blackouts are commonplace. Farmers, who account for about two-fifths of all the power consumed, can barely rely on getting power for half of every day. In industrial zones, the lifeblood of India's vibrant economy, unstable power supplies are such trouble that the biggest companies usually build their own power plants.

So most analysts expect that the demand for electricity will rise at about 10 percent a year. (For comparison, U.S. power demand notches up at just 2 percent annually.)

Over the past decade, about one third of India's new power supplies came from natural gas and hydro electricity. Both those sources have been good news for global warming - natural gas is the least carbon- intensive of all the fossil fuels, and most of India's hydroelectric dams probably emit almost no greenhouse gases.

However, the bloom is coming off those greenhouse-friendly roses. New supplies of natural gas cost about twice what Indians are used to paying, and environmental objections are likely to scupper the government's grand plans for new hydro dams.

That leaves coal - the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels. Already more than half of India's new power supplies come from coal, and that could grow rapidly.

Traditionally, the coal sector was plagued by inefficiencies. State coal mines were notoriously dangerous and inefficient. Coal-fired plants in western provinces, far from the coal fields and vulnerable to the dysfunctional rail network, often came within days of shutting operations due to lack of coal.

All that is changing. Private and highly efficient coal mines are grabbing growing shares of the coal market. Upgrades to the nation's high-tension power grid is making it feasible to generate electricity with new plants installed right at the coal mines.

These improvements make coal the fuel to beat.

So the deal struck with President George W. Bush matters. At the moment, India has just 3 gigawatts of nuclear plants connected to the grid. Government planners envision that nuclear supply will grow to 30 GW over the next generation, but that will remain a fantasy without access to advanced nuclear technologies and, especially, nuclear fuels - such as those offered under the deal with the Bush administration.

By 2020, even after discounting for the government's normal exuberance in its forecasts, a fresh start for nuclear power could increase nuclear generating capacity nearly ten-fold.

By displacing coal, that would avoid about 130 million tons of carbon dioxide per year (for comparison, the full range of emission cuts planned by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol will total just 200 million tons per year).

The effort, if successful, would eclipse the scheme under the Kyoto Protocol, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, that was designed to reward developing countries that implement projects to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The largest 100 of these CDM projects, in total, won't reduce emissions as much as a successful effort to help India embrace safe nuclear power.

The benefits in slowing global warming are not enough to make the deal a winner. Care is needed to tame the risks of proliferation, especially those connected from India's system of breeder reactors that make more weapons-capable fuel than they consume. And complementary efforts, led by Indians, are needed to fix the trouble in India's electricity sector that have so far discouraged private investors.

None of this will be easy. There are no silver bullets in cooling the greenhouse.

What is important is that the deal is not just a one-off venture, as the administration's backers, on the defensive, have suggested. It could frame a new approach to technology sharing and managing a more proliferation proof fuel cycle that, in turn, will multiply the benefits of a cooler climate.

Coal-rich China is among the many other countries that would welcome more nuclear power and whose emissions of carbon dioxide are growing fast - even faster than India's.

Quite accidentally, it seems, the Bush administration has stumbled on part of an effective strategy to slow global warming. Now it should marry that clever scheme overseas with an effective plan here at home.

The nuclear deal reached during President Bush's recent visit to India unleashed a predictable wave of criticism. From editorial and op-ed pages to Congress, led by the left but supported on the right, the administration has been assailed for making a bad bargain.

Under the agreement, which still needs congressional approval, India would open much of its nuclear facilities to international inspections in return for gaining access to the world's supplies of uranium and U.S. nuclear expertise.

The attacks on the deal reflect the view of the nonproliferation lobby -- the experts and policymakers whose central concern is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. I share their aim. But American arguments against the India deal are misleading and only expose the deep contradictions, if not hypocrisy, of our own nuclear policies.

There are two main criticisms of the agreement: first, it undermines the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the NPT, and second, it permits, even encourages, India to expand its nuclear weapons production.

The NPT issue is particularly sensitive at a time when the international community is trying to persuade Iran to give up certain nuclear technologies which many nations fear are part of a secret bomb program.

The NPT created two sets of global rules -- one for the five nuclear weapons powers it recognizes (China, the United States, Russia, Britain and France) and another for everyone else. The five, for example, allow only "voluntary'' international safeguards on their civilian nuclear facilities. They have no obligation to open their military programs to any kind of scrutiny. And the NPT places no real limits on their arsenals, other than a vague commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The rest must open their nuclear energy programs fully to international inspection and agree never to build bombs. In exchange, they gain access to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Iran -- and North Korea -- made that bargain and can be held to account for breaking the rules. But India consistently regarded that as an unequal trade-off and never signed the NPT; neither did Pakistan and Israel, two other nuclear weapons states.

India's nuclear program is the product of decades of largely indigenous effort; it did not result from secretive proliferation in violation of the NPT.

The deal with India turns the five into six. It treats India as a de facto member of the inner club. The deal would require changes in U.S. law to remove existing restrictions on the transfer of nuclear energy technology, changes that would allow India to be treated no differently from China.

That does not weaken the NPT -- it strengthens it. It brings it more into accord with reality and gives India a stake in a system it had previously rejected as unfair. It paves the way for India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the international organization that controls nuclear exports.

The critics are right that the deal enables India to expand its production of fissile materials to make nuclear warheads. Eight of India's 22 power reactors will remain outside international controls, along with a new breeder reactor. The Indians fought for that exemption because they feel their nuclear arsenal may not be large enough to deter a nuclear first strike by Pakistan or China in the future. Critics fear that with increased access to uranium and limited inspections, India will set off an arms race in South Asia.

Again, the agreement simply treats India like the five. Nonproliferation experts claim that unlike India, however, the five have halted their production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that could be used to build new weapons. This is true, but misleading.

The five have massive stockpiles of fissile material built up during the Cold War. "If I've got a full pantry, it's easy for me to swear off trips to the supermarket,'' said Michael Levi, an arms-control expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Moreover, the United States has embarked on a new program to rebuild its nuclear weapons production capability, including creating new facilities to produce plutonium cores for warheads and to assemble them.

India has agreed to back a global pact to cut off fissile-material production. But the Bush administration does not support a treaty that would actually verify this is taking place. And the U.S. Senate has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that would permanently halt any new testing of nuclear weapons.

A Congress that can support those policies is hardly in a position to challenge the administration's agreement with India. Rather than block the U.S.-India deal, it makes more sense to improve it. This could include reaching agreements for cooperation between the two countries to ensure the safety and security of nuclear facilities, including those for military purposes, suggested Stanford Professor Scott D. Sagan, a leading expert on nuclear safety and nonproliferation. "Reducing the risk of terrorist theft of nuclear materials or weapons in India would also help protect the United States,'' argues Sagan.

Beyond that, the six acknowledged nuclear powers should begin to seriously fulfill their part of the NPT bargain -- to cap fissile-material production, to ban nuclear testing, and to eventually radically reduce stored arsenals of nuclear weapons and materials.

When India spectacularly burst into the headlines via its nuclear explosions in May 1998, then US president Bill Clinton had openly vented his fury before aides in the White House. "We are going to come down on those guys like a ton of bricks," he had remarked. Clinton's "volcanic fit" found its echo in the White House statement that expressed "distress" and "displeasure", culminating in Washington imposing a slew of sanctions against India.

These images from the past, culled out from Engaging India, then deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott's book, appear incredible now. Especially as India readies itself to accord a warm reception to US President George W. Bush next week. The entente, the product of laboriously conducted diplomacy as much as geopolitical shifts that yoked the two together as 'natural allies', is now taking deep root. Sure, there will be protest rallies, strident voices will rail against Bush's hegemonic designs, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be cautioned against any tight clinch with Bush. Yet even these voices arise from the awareness that there's a growing relationship between the US and India, realized through knots of strategic partnership and cooperation in every conceivable field - from economy and nuclear technology to education, space and agriculture.

Bush's visit next week prompted Karl Inderfurth, who was assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the Clinton administration, to say, "All of this represents a refreshing degree of continuity in US foreign policy, based on a recognition by the last two American presidents that India is a country that will be a key player in the 21st century." Similarly, Robert Hathaway, of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, is impressed that "two successive Indian governments representing different political views and parties... both came to the same conclusion that it is in India's interest to forge a better relationship with the US."

From imposing sanctions against India to laying out a blueprint for nuclear cooperation, both New Delhi and Washington have come a long way in an inordinately short time. Ironically, it was Clinton who provided the impetus for this transformation. Talbott says the former president, after coming to terms with the Pokhran II realities, found it "downright distasteful and counterproductive" to impose sanctions against a country he was trying to improve relations with. Consequently, Talbott, Inderfurth and senior director in the National Security Council Bruce Riedal were entrusted with the task of pulling out Indo-US relations from the abyss in which it had been languishing from the beginnings of the Cold War era.What followed was a dialog between foreign minister Jaswant Singh and Talbott, both seeking to convey to each other the security and strategic interests of their respective countries.

The dialog started yielding dividends immediately, even during the Kargil conflict. Clinton's confrontation of then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif at their July 4, 1999, meeting in Washington took trust patterns between the US and India to a new level. "Throughout this period, we kept the Indian government informed of what we were doing to try to ease the crisis," recalls Inderfurth, who played a key role in the dialog with Sharif. "All of this turned into an important confidence-builder in our new relationship with India."

"The July 4 meeting was the turning point," agrees Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. "It demonstrated that US engagement in the India-Pakistan imbroglio would not be detrimental to New Delhi's interests, and it shifted the Clinton administration's focus from proliferation to engagement." The trust was manifest in Clinton's spectacularly successful visit to India in March 2000. An enabling factor in the budding Indo-US romance, says former ambassador Richard Celeste, was the now-forgotten Y2K factor. "The crisis introduced India's enormously talented manpower to our business leaders. Today, the 24/7 bond between companies in the US and service providers in India is the stuff of books and myth-making."

The budding romance acquired a new meaning with the advent of Bush in the White House. His most perspicacious decision was to appoint confidant Robert D. Blackwill as ambassador to India. Blackwill appealed to the popular imagination; his unequivocal pronouncements against Pakistan for fomenting terrorism in India further bolstered the trust between New Delhi and Washington. More importantly, he sought to impart a new heft to the relationship by putting his formidable weight behind the "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership", which envisaged cooperation between the two countries in civil nuclear energy, hi-tech trade, space and dual technology. "If Clinton was the pioneer of the new relationship, Bush is its architect," says Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The impulse for the new relationship is linked to the question: why has India started to matter to the US? Inderfurth cites three reasons: India will become the world's most populous nation, it may well have the world's fastest growing economy by 2020, and it is the world's largest democracy. Krepon adds one more to the list: intellectual capital. "The world expects India to do more heavy lifting," he says.

Ultimately, a relationship in international affairs hinges on convergence of interests. Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who's now advising under secretary of state R. Nicholas Burns, listed a string of "common interests" at a congressional hearing last year. These included:

preventing Asia from being dominated by any single power that has the capacity to crowd out others and which may use aggressive assertion of national self-interest to threaten American presence, American alliances, and American ties with the states of the region; eliminating the threat posed by state sponsors of terrorism; protecting the global commons, especially the sea lanes of communications, through which flow not only goods and services critical to the global economy but also undesirable commerce such as drug trafficking, people smuggling and weapons of mass destruction technologies.

So, isn't China the "single power" that Tellis thinks could threaten American interests in Asia? He denied this assumption to Congress, but many feel China is indeed the factor behind Washington's attempts to assist India in becoming a major world power.As author Sunil Khilnani, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says, "Many current inhabitants of the Pentagon see an India allied to the US as a potential bulwark to a China whose ambitions are still difficult to read." Washington's long-term view is that since China will not support the US war on terror, it's a threat against which the US needs a counterweight. "Japan has proven it does not have the emotional and intellectual muscle to face China. Hence, India should play that role," explains Rafiq Dossani of Stanford University.

The Bush regime's keenness on India also springs from the disaster his other foreign policy initiatives have been. "Bush would like to leave at least one foreign policy achievement as his legacy. He'd like to claim that he 'delivered' India to the US, just as Nixon could earlier claim the same about China," says Khilnani.

These reasons apart, the relationship has gathered great momentum from business-to-business links over the last decade. Says Anatol Lieven of the New America Foundation in Washington, "India's abandoning of its social democratic economic model, derived from the Nehru period, in favor of globalization and free market economics has made it much more attractive to investment and ideologically sympathetic to the US." Indeed, the more the two countries deepen their economic interdependence, the more each will have a stake in the other. And this economic interdependence can deepen, says Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution, through the removal of obstacles to US investments. "Infrastructure, (inadequate) liberalization, and education are three real obstacles. These (improvement in the three areas) will make it easy to implement the strategic relationship."

That India matters to the US is no longer a promise of the future. At a recent conference, former state department official Walter Andersen pointed out two US decisions that underscored India's enhanced importance. First, the four-country tsunami relief efforts involving the navies of the US, Japan, Australia and India. Two, the Bush administration's efforts to exempt a nuclear-capable India from exports restrictions on nuclear and dual use technology.

The blossoming ties have enabled significant partnerships in the international arena too. India has supported the war on terror in Afghanistan; its navy protected high-value US cargoes through the Straits of Malacca; more recently, India voted with the US at the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare Iran in "non-compliance" with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

All this doesn't mean the US and India will automatically collaborate on every problem dogging them. "Nobody expects a perfect alignment ever, but increasing alignment is something we hope will come naturally," says Schaffer. Partly this alignment can be brought about through changes in the conduct of foreign policy. For instance, the US, Hathaway admits, needs to recognize that India expects to be treated on a basis of equality. Similarly, Khilnani contends, a section of Indian political elites need to shed its instinctive anti-Americanism. "This does not mean renouncing a critical position, or an independent assessment of our own interests. It means engaging more deeply and confidently, and picking battles more selectively and prudently," he says.

Obviously, like any two countries, there will be disagreements. "Indeed, there have been over the past few years on a number of issues, including the war in Iraq," says Inderfurth. But, he adds optimistically, "the fact that this has not disrupted the upward trajectory of our relationship is a good sign and a promising one for future relations."

The United States and India have gone a long way from Cold War days of wariness and suspicion to genuine friendship and incipient global partnership. The visit of President Clinton to India in 2000 marked a breakthrough in Indo-U.S. ties, which had been set back by India's decision to conduct nuclear weapons tests in 1998.

President Bush, to his credit, broadened the road opened by Clinton and paved it with a more solid foundation. Cooperation in a range of areas, from military ties to joint scientific work, is well established. A presidential visit puts a personal seal on that budding partnership -- even if it is a couple of years late.

When it comes to Indo-U.S. relations, however, there are three pitfalls to avoid: the India card; democracy matters; and it's the economy, stupid!

The India card

Washington has a surplus of geo-strategists. As Kissinger famously played the "China card'' against the Soviet Union, the strategists imagine cleverly using an India card against a rising China.

There is one small rub in that grand design -- India isn't interested in being an instrument of an American containment strategy against China. As Robert Blackwill, former Bush administration ambassador to India, put it recently: "There's no way better to empty a drawing room in New Delhi of Indian strategists than to start talking about this idea.''

Indians eagerly compete with China for economic leadership in Asia. They have a legacy of tensions, from border wars to nuclear rivalry. But Indian policy is to engage China and create the best relationship possible.

The president is avoiding India card talk. But it is no secret that some inside the administration harbor these illusions. Let's hope they keep their mouths shut for at least this week.

Democracy matters

Beyond cliches about the world's two largest democracies, both governments have a habit of forgetting that democracy really matters. Witness the up-to-the-last-minute effort to salvage a deal from July to open India's civilian nuclear program to international inspection in exchange for access to nuclear energy technology and fuel.

The Bush administration did little to sell that deal in Congress, either ahead or afterward. Opposition has mounted on both sides of the aisles from those who fear it would undermine nuclear proliferation controls, particularly when Iran is claiming its own right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology.

The United States has now toughened its requirements. But the coalition government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh faces rising resistance in parliament, encouraged by the prestigious nuclear establishment, to any deal that would significantly restrict India's ability to develop and build nuclear weapons.

I favored the July deal and support any reasonable new agreement that would separate a significant part of India's civilian nuclear program from its military one. Hopefully, the negotiations will succeed, but even if they do, both governments need to do a much better job selling it in their feisty democratic systems.

It's the economy, stupid

The biggest threat to this emergent partnership is to forget what brought the two countries together -- not geopolitics but shared interests. Some of those are security-driven, not least a common foe in Islamist terrorism. But the real driver has been economics.

Since India decided to open its protected economy in the early 1990s, the country has taken off, producing sustained growth rates nearing double digits. Led by the high-technology industry, foreign investment and trade with India is rising rapidly. The Indo-Americans who thrive in Silicon Valley form a powerful cultural and economic bridge between our two countries.

India's billon people include a middle class of 200 million to 300 million, equal to the population of this country, with an increasingly sophisticated appetite for Western consumer goods. In contrast to China, India has a young population, half of them under 25 years old.

For the United States, there are added opportunities -- and competitive challenges. As is evident from the Saturday morning phone calls from telemarketers in Chennai trying to sell me a new mortgage, India has a great resource in its English-speaking educated elite. That has meant job loss in the United States but also openings to create new businesses and new jobs.

Both governments need to focus on what is needed to accelerate the kind of virtual integration between India and the United States we see in Silicon Valley. If we do that right, the geopolitics will follow naturally. If we mess that up, all the strategic castles in the sky will come crashing to Earth very soon.