Obama accused of muting Bhopal disaster

US president Barack Obama faced angry accusations on Thursday that his government was putting pressure on India to bury the highly emotive 1984 Bhopal disaster only weeks before he is to visit New Delhi.

An exchange of e-mails between two US and Indian officials, obtained by the Indian press, suggested Washington was uncomfortable with the renewed attention being given to one of the world’s worst industrial accidents at a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide, a US chemicals company, in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

An Indian court recently found local managers of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary guilty of criminal negligence 26 years after the gas leak that killed more than 8,000 people.

The e-mails were interpreted in India as the US linking its future investment in the country while muting the outcry surrounding the still open wounds suffered in the Bhopal disaster.

Renewed publicity around Bhopal has triggered calls for the extradition of Warren Anderson, the elderly former chairman of Union Carbide, and for greater compensation from Dow Chemicals, the US multinational that now owns Union Carbide.

A ministerial panel has also recommended pursuit of Dow Chemicals for redress.

Activists in Bhopal have drawn comparisons between the 1984 accident and the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They accuse the US of double standards when it comes to US companies poisoning communities and the environment in the developing world.

An e-mail from Michael Froman, US deputy national security adviser, to Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s power planning commission, had warned of “developments” that threatened to have a “chilling effect on our investment relationship”.

Mr Froman had raised his concerns about the spotlight on Dow Chemicals when responding to Mr ­Ahluwalia’s request for US support in getting World Bank loans.

In a statement released on Thursday night, Mr Froman insisted that the US did not “seek to interfere” with resolution of the Bhopal disaster, and that he had not linked future investment with the Bhopal controversy.

“With regard to recent reports about my private correspondence with Mr Ahluwalia, I want to make clear that I was not making any link between what are two separate and distinct issues nor issuing a ‘threat’ of any sort.”