By IANS
New Delhi : Even as the government failed to win over the Left and the opposition parties to back the India-US nuclear deal in a debate in parliament, India’s atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar Wednesday said he was “hopeful” the deal will eventually come through all the hurdles in its way.
“I am hopeful,” Kakodkar, chief of the Atomic Energy Commission, told reporters outside parliament when asked whether he felt that the nuclear deal will get through political opposition as seen in the debate in the Rajya Sabha Tuesday.
Kakodkar was sitting in the front row of the officers’ gallery in the upper house Wednesday afternoon when External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was replying to the short duration discussion on the nuclear deal.
Kakodkar has backed the nuclear deal despite opposition from a section of top nuclear scientists and has been actively involved in finalising the contours of the deal since India and the US struck it in 2005.
The deal will reopen doors of global civilian nuclear commerce with India after three decades in return for New Delhi placing 14 of its power reactors under international safeguards.
In his reply, Mukherjee batted vigorously for the deal, saying it does not bar India from conducting a nuclear test. He underlined New Delhi’s commitment to non-proliferation and universal nuclear disarmament.
Rejecting the contention of the main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), that former prime minister Indira Gandhi had exploded the nuclear bomb in 1974, Mukherjee read out from Gandhi’s remarks after the test.
“We are fully committed to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he said. “We do not believe in nuclear weaponisation in a massive way,” he stressed.
But, he added, referring to the 1974 nuclear test and the Pokhran II in 1998 conducted by the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government: “When the paste has come out of the tube, it became a fait accompli.”
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) leader pointed out that his government was pursuing the policy of its predecessor NDA government, which had decided not to conduct any further nuclear tests. “You yourself announced no more tests, we are only pursuing the same policy,” he said.
“Depending on who is your adversary at any point of time and what is his capability, depending on that the government of the day will decide if tests are needed,” he said.
“If necessary, we will do it (make more nuclear bombs) as in 1974 and 1998 and the consequences will follow as in ’74 and ’98,” he added.