India will walk out if it wants to test, says PM

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, July 27, 2007 : India will walk out of the nuclear deal with the US after giving six months notice, if it wants to conduct another nuclear test, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told BJP leaders here yesterday.

But in the same briefing, Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar admitted that despite the promised separation between the military and civilian facilities, the people working on both sides could be common.

``Our personnel will move as we want them to,’’ Kakodkar said. National Security Adviser M K Narayanan kept absolutely quiet at Kakodkar’s comments.

Asked for their views on the nuclear deal, BJP leader and former foreign minister Jaswant Singh said he had ``commended’’ the Indian negotiators on doing their job, but the party would reserve judgement until it had seen the text.

``My commending them on the negotiations does not mean that they will produce commendable results,’’ Singh said, denying that he had said that the negotiators had done a ``superb job.’’

But Singh, who negotiated a strategic dialogue with former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott for two years after the BJP government conducted nuclear tests in 1998, said his party was concerned that ``the gains of 1998, that is a strategic autonomy for India, must not be compromised. No other country should have a say in India’s strategic programme,’’ he said.

However, if India was now going to dedicate a safeguarded facility to reprocess spent fuel, which would be open to IAEA inspectors, then ``such intrusive IAEA inspection in our nuclear programme is going to be very troublesome,’’ Singh said.

Singh also pointed out that since ``there has to be some give’’ in any negotiation, he wanted to know from the Prime Minister what India had given to the US.

But Narayanan, who largely briefed on the 14 clauses that comprise the agreement, promised to the BJP that there was no space for any dents in India’ strategic autonomy. ``All the decisions will remain ours,’’ Narayanan said.

Singh had more questions : On the details of the additional protocol that India was going to negotiate with the IAEA, how China was likely to react at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and whether the US was likely to give in to China which had already begun leaning on it heavily to give the same privileges to India.