As a nation that has long championed the abolition of nuclear weapons, India has every reason to welcome the new disarmament framework unveiled by US President Barack Obama in Prague on Sunday.

President Obama's nuclear initiative is not too different from the vision articulated by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi two decades ago.

There is one big difference, however, between Rajiv's nuclear action plan outlined at the United Nations in 1988, and Obama's Prague nuclear design.

In the past, India was an 'outsider' demanding a voice in shaping the global nuclear rules; now New Delhi joins the debate as an 'insider' and a responsible nuclear weapon power.

The changed relationship between India and the global order is indeed the principal benefit from the Indo-US nuclear deal that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conceived and implemented along with the US President George W. Bush during 2005-08 against great political odds.

In recent months, there has been some concern in New Delhi that the Obama Administration might seek to reverse the gains of the nuclear deal and return to a non-proliferation agenda that could once again divide India and the United States.

As it awaits a detailed briefing from Washington on the president's nuclear plan, the first look at Obama' plan suggests that there may be the basis for significant Indo-U.S. cooperation on nuclear arms control and non-proliferation.

India has always supported the three enduring traditional elements of this framework reaffirmed by Obama in Prague: responsibility of the United States and Russia for massive nuclear cuts, ending all nuclear testing, and a ban on the production of nuclear weapons material.

... contd.