AIADMK chief Jayalalitha said here in a statement that if the sanctions were not lifted India should regard itself as `morally free' to oppose CTBT.

``Blackmail through sanctions and threats'' should be met with ``firmness and resolve'', she said adding that sanctions should be lifted and India be given the same rights as other nuclear powers.

She said the recent remarks of US ambassador to India Richard Celeste that India should make available details of its minimum nuclear deterrent only showed that the Clinton administration was insisting on conditions.

``Washington continues to impose cruel sanctions on a democratic country that is a home to millions of poor, even as it is indulging in dialogues,'' she said.

The Centre should clearly convey to the USthat India would not accept double standards - one for it and another for the five nuclear powers. ``I deliberately do not include Pakistan because it is well known from where its device has come from,'' she said.

Jayalalitha said Celeste should first get his own government to reveal the full facts behind the American nuclear doctrine and deterrent. Only then he had the ``moral authority'' to ask India to do so. India should also insist on all nuclear powers to release information simultaneously, she said.

The AIADMK believed that India would emerge as a super power early in the coming century and therefore had the right to be treated as an equal of other major powers, she said.

The ambassador's words indicated that he was not yet aware that India was an independent country which did not need to take any one's permission to protect its interest, she said.

Apart from calling upon the US ``to follow the same medicine'' which it was `prescribing' to India, the AIADMK also called upon the americans toprotest against the ``attempt by the Clinton administration to create an economic crisis in India through sanctions and by blocking loans from international agencies.''