By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : The US has again assured India that it does not have any real concerns about going forward with the India-US civil nuclear deal as it has proper IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards built into it.
“I think that whenever there’s one of these agreements, the so-called 123 agreements, there’s quite a bit of transparency measures built into it, IAEA safeguards,” State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Thursday.
“And so I don’t think we really have any real concerns, any proliferation concerns, about going forward with this,” he said when asked how the Obama administration, given its concerns about non-proliferation, square with the deal with India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
Asked if it doesn’t send a wrong signal, Kelly said: “No, I don’t think so. I think just because we have this priority about proliferation doesn’t mean that we’re – that we have concerns about civil uses of nuclear energy, as long as there are proper safeguards built in.”
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])