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Nuclear deal: India will not cross 'red lines'
By IANS,
Apr 26, 2007 - 5:17:16 PM
New Delhi, April 26 - Ahead of the next round of civil nuclear negotiations in Washington next week, India has said that it will not cross the 'red lines' laid down by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in parliament last year on not compromising the country's strategic autonomy as it negotiates a bilateral civil nuclear pact with the US.
'We would respect and implement what the prime minister said to parliament on August 17 last year when he laid down the red lines we will not cross, which I think command broad support across the political spectrum,' a parliamentary panel report quoted Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon as saying.
The 15th report of the standing committee on external affairs headed by Laxminarayan Pandey, Lok Sabha MP, was tabled in parliament Thursday.
In his statement to the parliamentary panel, Menon also stressed that the bilateral pact will not compromise India's strategic deterrence and its three-stage civil nuclear energy programme.
In an important speech to parliament on Aug 17 last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured that India would never compromise on its strategic autonomy and repudiated any attempt to impose a ban on nuclear testing and a moratorium on the production of fissile materials.
'We are not prepared to go beyond a unilateral voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing. We are not willing to accept a moratorium on the production of fissile materials,' he had said.
Amid anxieties about the course of the civil nuclear deal, Menon heads to Washington on a two-day visit April 30 to engage in the third round of negotiations on a bilateral 123 civil nuclear energy cooperation pact with Nicholas Burns, the US' chief pointsman on the nuclear deal.
The US is pushing for including a ban by India on nuclear testing which is not acceptable to India. Differences over other crucial issues like India's demand for access to technologies related to reprocessing, enrichment and heavy water reduction, which the US is not ready to accept, have cast their shadows over negotiations on a bilateral pact.
The negotiations will take place in accordance with the July 18, 2005, India-US joint statement, March 2, 2006, separation plan of civilian and military facilities presented by India and the parameters outlined by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in parliament over the last two years, Menon clarified before the parliamentary panel.
'Whatever we do with the US will not affect our nuclear strategic programme; secondly it will not in any way involve our three such indigenous civil nuclear programmes,' Menon said.
'The two countries are presently engaged in negotiations on a bilateral 123 agreement that will identify the specific parameters of civil nuclear energy cooperation,' the external affairs ministry in a written reply told the parliamentary panel.
The ministry also stressed that India is engaging members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to persuade it to amend its guidelines in favour of nuclear commerce with India.
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