NEW DELHI: India’s security authorities do not believe they need nuclear weapons at the moment, Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral said on Monday. He said India’s five week old; center left alliance government had taken positive steps to revive talks with arch foe Pakistan which New Delhi accuses of harboring nuclear ambitions. “We are awaiting the Pakistani response,” he said. “My understanding is the security authorities do not think they need nuclear weapons for the moment,” Gujral told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Delhi. India, which tested a nuclear device in 1974, says it has no nuclear weapons program and does not plan a second test. The Gowda’s government has pledged to retain an option to build nuclear weapons until global disarmament is achieved. Gujral’s remarks followed an exchange of letters between the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, ending more than two years of aloofness. The two countries have discussed the possibility of signing a pact to avoid attacking each other’s nuclear facilities. Gujral said India had the capability to develop nuclear weapons. He added: “We will be keeping our options open to respond to any situation in the future.”
Indian Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda said on Monday India would not change its decision to reject a proposed global treaty banning nuclear test blasts and would resist Western pressure on New Delhi to sign it. “We have already made our point very clear and I tell you very frankly, there is no question of a change in our stand,” Deve Gowda said in an interview to State television. Asked about pressure from Western nations on India to sign the treaty, the prime minister said: “Let there be any pressure from any quarter, I will withstand that pressure.”
India last month rejected a draft of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty being negotiated in Geneva, saying it was flawed and discriminatory and did not take the world any closer to universal nuclear disarmament. New Delhi also rejected a clause in the pact that would require India to sign the treaty in order for it to come into force, saying the provision impinged on India’s sovereign decision to accede to the agreement. Gujral said India was not a hurdle to the signing of the CTBT but New Delhi regards proposals in the treaty as inadequate to completely check the testing of nuclear weapons.
Indian officials said New Delhi does not oppose any move to go ahead with the CTBT agreement without India. “There is a move to coerce India into signing the treaty by raising a clause that the treaty would not come into force unless India first agrees to it,” an official said. ““We oppose such pressure tactics of laying the blame for any disagreement at India’s doors,” the official said. “We will be stressing the point again when the talks resume on July 29.” India says the CTBT is flawed and arbitrary because it would allow nuclear weapons states to conduct low yield and computer simulated tests without explosions.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 17, 1996
