Indian Govt. Agreed To Let Union Carbide Off The Hook For Bhopal W. Help From Henry Kissinger

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put pressure on the Indian Government to agree a legal settlement that let the American chemical company Union Carbide off the hook for the 25,000 people killed by the toxic gas disaster in Bhopal 30 years ago. A letter released under freedom of ­information legislation reveals that the late Indian steel magnate JRD Tata wrote secretly to the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in May 1988 conveying ­Kissinger's concern about the delays in reaching agreement on the compensation to be paid to victims.

At the time, Kissinger - who became notorious around the world in the 1970s for being involved in some of most hawkish US foreign policy decisions - was an adviser to Union Carbide and other major US corporations. Kissinger thought the company was prepared to make a "fair and generous settlement" that "would effectively counter any attack or criticism" because it was more than interim amounts suggested by Indian courts, Tata wrote. In February 1989, the Indian government agreed a settlement of $470 million (£300m).

This has since been widely derided as completely inadequate given the horrendous scale and persisting legacy of the disaster on December 3, 1984. Crucially, as part of the deal, all charges against Union Carbide and its managers were dropped - though this was subsequently overturned by India's Supreme Court in 1991.

The letter, obtained by Bhopal activists, is important because it confirms what many have long suspected: that the US and Tata were complicit in allowing Union Carbide to evade responsibility for the world's worst industrial accident. Activists have also released two diplomatic cables from the online campaign group WikiLeaks, showing that Kissinger helped build the pesticide plant that showered Bhopal with poisonous gas. When he was US Secretary of State in 1976 he facilitated a bank loan of $1.3m to Union Carbide to cover 45% of the cost of building the plant.

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