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Will seek Anderson’s extradition: FM

Kolkata/Washington, June 12
India will demand the extradition of former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson from the US, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here today.

“We would request the US government for the extradition of Warren Anderson, Union Carbide CEO at the time of the Bhopal gas tragedy,” said Mukherjee.

Anderson, 89, is now retired and lives in the US. For its part, the US has said it would give “fair consideration” to any request for the extradition of Anderson and “carefully evaluate” any call to bring him to justice.

Anderson and wife Lillian Anderson are living in retirement in Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York and also own houses in Vero Beach, Florida and Greenwich, Connecticut. He is believed to be deaf and senile by activists, who have confronted him over the Bhopal disaster.

“Since extradition requests are confidential, I’m not in position to verify, the fact, whether we have such requests or whether we have responded to it,” State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, told reporters on Friday when asked how the US will respond if the Government of India approaches it with a fresh extradition request. “We have an extradition treaty with India. And if India makes an extradition request to us, we will give it fair consideration,” he said. Asked if the US will help India to track Anderson, who was released on a bond of Rs 25,000 in 1984, and to bring him to justice, Crowley said: “I have no way of validating whatever document he signed in 1984.”

“All I will tell you, obviously, if the Government of India makes such a request of us, we will carefully evaluate it,” he said. Declining to “draw a direct comparison” between the Obama administration’s call for accountability in the case of BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Bhopal gas tragedy, Crowley said: “Certainly, if I recall, in the case of Bhopal there was a settlement realised a number of years ago. “And I believe that there was an effort towards remediation, although I don't express that I have all of the facts here in front of me.”

Earlier, this week, US Congressman Frank Pallone, the founder and former co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, had supported the demand for Anderson’s extradition. — IANS