We can still conduct nuclear tests: Pranab

NEW DELHI: India has not foreclosed the option to conduct nuclear tests if warranted by supreme national interest, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday assured the Rajya Sabha.

“If nuclear testing must be conducted as a national priority and in supreme national interest, we will have to do it. We have kept our options open,” he said while replying to the short-duration discussion on the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Upper House. The government, he added, had ensured that the moratorium on nuclear testing is not a treaty-bound commitment.

Mr Mukherjee told the members that India was only honouring a unilateral moratorium on further testing and not accepting any additional commitments other than what has been agreed upon in the July 18, 2005, Indo-US joint statement and the subsequent March 2, 2006, nuclear separation plan.

The external affairs minister, who was replying to the concerns raised by the members, on behalf of prime minister Manmohan Singh, who could not speak due to a toothache, pointed out that the Hyde US-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act was a thing between the US Executive and the Legislature with the latter merely empowering the Executive to negotiate the terms of the nuclear cooperation pact with India.

“The real negotiations (between India and US Executive) will start now because we have to enter into the 123 agreement,” he said and assured that the government will continue to take the House into confidence on the crucial matter. However, Mr Mukherjee was non-committal on CPM leader Sitaram Yechury’s demand that the House be consulted prior to signing of the 123 deal. “That assurance is a little difficult to give,” he replied.

Mr Mukherjee assured the Elders that there was nothing in the treaty to prevent India from going to other NSG states for nuclear supplies. Also, he swept aside allegations that India had given up its insistence on being inducted into the elite nuclear club and asserted that it was a ground reality that India had earlier conducted nuclear tests and was a nuclear state, something that nobody else should decide.