January 17, 2003	Friday	Ziqa'ad 13, 1423

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NEW DELHI, Jan 16: The commander of the Indian armed forces on Thursday tried to bury a controversy that the army, air force and navy were reluctant to surrender their nuclear arsenals to a newly-formed strategic command.

Admiral Madhvendera Singh, the current rotating chief of the joint armed forces command, dismissed growing rumblings as speculation and said the strategic command would decide on the “utilization and use of nuclear weapons”.

“There will be no problems over the transfer of command and control of the nuclear weapons,” Singh told reporters on the eve of a five-day visit to Iran.

Singh, who is also the head of India’s navy, said the commander of the strategic force would report to him and in turn he would convey the message to a nuclear command authority, which will then determine the use of such weapons.

The admiral’s comments were significant amid the ongoing reconfiguration of the Indian air force’s British-built Jaguar bombers, French Mirage-2000 jets and Russian Sukhoi planes to carry nuclear weapons.

The Indian government last month ignored appeals by the three services to hold charge of India’s nuclear weapons and set up a two-tier command and control centre that places the nuclear button in the hands of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

It also decided India would keep to its pledge of “no-first-strike” of nuclear weapons.—AFP