WASHINGTON, March 14: In 1974 India cheated on its commitment to use the technology it borrowed from Canada only for peaceful purposes and conducted a nuclear explosion, says a report issued in Washington on Tuesday.

The report, by Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that India took out fuel rods from a reactor it had received from Canada, extracted the plutonium from those rods and detonated its first nuclear test in 1974.

India called it a “peaceful” nuclear explosion, but the country now admits it was a test of a weapon design, noted Mr Cirincione, a renowned campaigner against nuclear proliferation who openly opposes the nuclear deal President Bush signed in New Delhi two weeks ago.

When Canada provided this reactor to India, it made it very clear that the reactor and the accompanying technology were supposed to be exclusively for peaceful use, Mr Cirincione said.

When India broke its pledge, Canada responded by ceasing all nuclear cooperation with New Delhi, he added.

Mr Cirincione believes that Canada will now play a key role in determining whether the Indo-US “deal lives or dies” and that Canada has a special responsibility in this matter because more than any Indian scientist, Canada can be called “the true mother of the Indian nuclear bomb.” Mr Cirincione believes that the deal President Bush signed with India, directly violates the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as several major US laws. The Bush deal would directly encourage and assist India’s nuclear bomb programme, in contradiction to Article 1 of the NPT that prohibits any signatory nation from helping another nation develop nuclear weapons, he adds.

Mr Cirincione says that before President Bush can sell “one gram of uranium” to India, the US Congress will have to approve changes to US laws. Senior members of both parties have indicated their deep concerns about the deal and the precedent it sets for other nations, including Iran, he added. The reaction has been so negative that the Indian ambassador to the US complained that the non-proliferation ideologues have highjacked the debate”.

But Cirincione warns that some nations, such as France, Russia and Canada, were tempted by the profits to be made in nuclear sales to the world’s second most populous nation.