India insists on nuclear deterrent in talks
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from December 1999.
Brought to you by
- India said Tuesday its marathon arms control dialogue with the United States was based on a firm belief that it must retain a minimum nuclear deter"Our discussions with our interlocutors in the United States and other partners have been predicated on the fact that India will have credible minimum nuclear deterrent," foreign ministry spokesman Raminder Singh Jassal said.
India declared itself a nuclear weapons state when it carried out a series of underground nuclear explosions last year and said it intended to develop a credible minimum nuclear deterrent.
Since the nuclear tests in the Pokhran desert, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott have held nine rounds of talks to reconcile Indian security interests with U.S. nonproliferation concerns. Jassal said two foreign ministry officials were in Washington to pave the way for another round of Talbott-Singh talks planned for London in the second half of January. "These are functional official-level talks, they flow from the larger discussion to harmonize our positions," he said.
Press Trust of India, in a report from Washington on Tuesday, quoted a senior State department official as saying that the United States understood India's minimum nuclear deterrent could change.
"The U.S. well understands that the level of minimum deterrent will change according to India's own perception of its changing security environment," said the official who was not identified.
The official's comments appeared to be in line with the formula India had given in response to past demands from Washington to spell out its definition of a minimum nuclear deterrent. The United States, which has led Western efforts to draw India and its nuclear-capable arch-foe Pakistan into the global regime for arms control, is urging New Delhi to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT): India has said it is willing to sign the treaty once it has built a domestic consensus on the pact.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met leaders of communist parties who said they wanted a parliamentary debate on the controversial treaty.
Last week, Vajpayee called the main Congress opposition party for talks on the CTBT and its leaders also said they needed more time to reflect on the pact.
"Since the issue was so complex, it was not possible for us to give a response without reflecting on the issues raised," a Congress statement quoted party chief Sonia Gandhi as saying at a meeting with party deputies.
Indian political groups joined hands to oppose the CTBT when it opened for signature in 1996 saying it was discriminatory. Since India's nuclear explosions last year, scientists and military analysts have said India needs no more tests and that joining the test ban regime would not hurt the country's security interests. The United States, by default, has given India more time to reflect on the pact after the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying the treaty in October. The treaty cannot go into force without ratification by all 44 nuclear-capablestates, so with the Senate vote it now goes into limbo. It could eventually be modified and sent to Congress for a new vote.
All five declared nuclear powers the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China have signed the treaty, but only Britain and France have ratified it.
