India moves closer to meeting US conditions: Nuclear deal
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 29: The US and India have moved closer to making a legal arrangement that will prevent New Delhi from conducting further nuclear tests and will formalise its commitment to a treaty to ban the production of fissile material, the fuel that goes into nuclear weapons, officials said.
The arrangement was negotiated this weekend in London where US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran concluded a two-day meeting to finalise an Indo-US nuclear deal signed in March.
“They were able to tie up a couple of loose ends concerning things that the Indian government owed the US in order to really move forward on this deal,” said US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Nuclear testing is one of the two issues on which the US has been trying to push India ever since President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the nuclear deal in New Delhi in March.
The other issue on which the US is seeking a strong Indian commitment is adherence to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Initiated in 1993, the treaty bans the production of fissile material for nuclear explosion or outside international safeguards.
Last fortnight, the US introduced its own version of the FMCT at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
The Indo-US nuclear deal gives a special, one-time exception in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime for India by acknowledging and legitimising it as a “responsible” nuclear weapons state. But to reach this important milestone, India first needs to accept a legal ban on further nuclear testing and pledge adherence to the FMCT.
India sees the ban on further nuclear tests as a voluntary moratorium that can be lifted at will. Nuclear hardliners in India do not want to write off the option of further tests to develop a fusion (hydrogen) bomb. India claimed it successfully tested a fusion assembly in 1998, but independent experts say it turned out to be a dud.
