China likely to swallow anger over India nuclear deal

By Chris Buckley - Analysis

BEIJING (Reuters) - India's nuclear deal with the United States, already dogged by opposition at home, has provoked alarm in neighbor China, but experts expect Beijing to swallow its complaints rather than risk a face-off with New Delhi.

The pact between New Delhi and Washington would offer India U.S. fuel and reactors while allowing it to stay out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, keep nuclear arms and protect its military atomic complex from international inspections.

Even if the agreement survives opposition from Indian leftists, who could break apart the coalition government, China's veto could kill it at an international level.

Indian newspapers have cited recent Chinese media comments to suggest that Beijing could scuttle the deal at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-nation club that works by consensus.

Washington will need to go to the NSG, which is supposed to discourage nuclear trade with countries outside full safeguards, to ask for special leeway for India.

Chinese state media and think-tanks have said the nuclear deal will bolster U.S. efforts to "contain" China and undercut international rules to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

"The nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and India not only seriously damages the integrity and effectiveness of the non-proliferation regime, it exposes the United States' multiple standards in non-proliferation", the People's Daily, official voice of the ruling Communist Party, said last month.

U.S. moves to draw New Delhi into a loose regional alliance of democratic countries such as Australia and Japan which pointedly excludes Beijing have magnified China's worries, said Zhang Li, an expert on South Asia at Sichuan University.