NEW DELHI, April 17: India said on Monday it would make no explicit commitment to the United States not to conduct fresh nuclear tests as part of a landmark civilian atomic cooperation agreement.

New Delhi has refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), calling it discriminatory, but it did announce a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing after it conducted atomic tests in 1998.

The civilian nuclear agreement was finalised when President Bush visited India last month.

But a draft of the deal framed since suggested that the pact would be discontinued if India tested a nuclear device, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

“In preliminary discussions on these elements, India has already conveyed to the US that such a provision has no place in the proposed bilateral agreement,” the statement said.

“India is bound only by what is contained in the July 18 joint statement, that is, continuing its commitment to a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing,” it said. This was an agreement in principle on the deal reached when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington last year.

The US Congress must approve legislation to seal the deal and India has said that a decision by Congress to block it would hit warming ties between the two countries.

Under the deal, India will receive US nuclear technology — including reactors and nuclear fuel — and in return separate its military and civilian facilities, and open up some atomic plants to international inspections.

India has already made it clear that the pact would not limit its nuclear weapons programme.

Some analysts say Washington was attempting to get Delhi to commit indirectly to the CTBT’s aims through the clause on discontinuing nuclear cooperation if it tested a device again. —Reuters