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India's top nuclear scientist prefers NPT to Indo-US nuclear deal

Iran Materials 3 July 2006 12:22 (UTC +04:00)

(IRNA) - India's top nuclear scientist, Homi Sethna, has said that India would be better off signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which permits the exit of any signatory nation, rather than the nuclear deal with the US that will bind the country for "perpetuity."

"NPT may be discriminatory, but we will still be allowed to exit, whereas in the current Indo-US deal which is under negotiation India will remain bound in perpetuity," Sethna said while delivering the keynote address at the `Forum of Integrated National Security' (FINS) in Mumbai, Doordarshan News said here, reports Trend.

"Therefore, I prefer the NPT...to signing the current deal (with the US)," said Sethna, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission that has been linked to the country's civil and military nuclear programs.

"India is supposed to get only uranium for its nuclear program to expand. Simply for this, so much compromising...is uncalled for," he said.

"The Americans were out of the nuclear power reactor building business for the last 25 years. So where is the question of (getting) technology from them?" asked the octogenarian scientist, who has been credited with playing a key role in the 1974 nuclear blast that saw India's emergence as a nuclear weapons power.

"Therefore, in order to end the current global sanctions on the nuclear program, we rather sign the NPT and it will give an escape route from going through all this trauma of separation and getting a special status agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the additional protocol," he said.

"The kind of things mentioned in the Preamble of the deal has all things like nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Comprehensive (nuclear) Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Iran issue which we cannot ignore," said another defence analyst, Bharat Karnard, who also addressed the seminar organized by FINS.

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