Singh defends nuclear accord with US ahead of Bush visit

[JCMach1]

SINGH IS REALLY DISSING BUSH!


Seven months after a nuclear pact with the United States, and 48 hours before the leader of the free world makes his first visit to the capital of the world's most rambunctious democracy, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his first and strongest defence yet of his controversial nuclear deal.

"We have judged every proposal made by the US side on merits, but we remain firm on the decision of what facilities may be identified as civilian will be made by India alone, not by anyone else," Singh told the Upper House of Parliament, as authorities tightened security for George W. Bush's three-day visit.

"No part of this process would affect or compromise our strategic programme," he said, adding his government had an "overarching commitment to national security" in answer to critics in the Left who have called it a sell-out.

He said India plans to list nuclear reactors as civilian, "amounting to roughly 65 per cent of the total installed thermal nuclear power capacity". It's the formula that was hammered out by the previous Vajpayee government when the famed Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh negotiations were ongoing.

Fourteen of its nuclear reactors will be listed as civilian. Most importantly, Singh said India would not accept international safeguards on its experimental fast-breeder reactor programme, endorsing the views of India's nuclear scientists who want to be free to work on the FBR until 2010, and are determined to go ahead with plans to build India's strategic nuclear deterrent... http://gulfnews.com/world/India/10022020.html