N-test: Pranab says India stands by policy of voluntary moratorium

In an official statement, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in New Delhi, “We remain committed to a voluntary, unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. We do not subscribe to any arms race, including a nuclear one. We have always tempered the exercise of our strategic autonomy with a sense of global responsibility. We affirm our policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons.”

“Our civil nuclear initiative will strengthen the international non-proliferation regime. India believes that the opening of full civil nuclear cooperation will be good for India and for the world,” Mukherjee added.

India also pitched the deal as an answer to the problem of climate change. The Foreign Minister said, “It will have a profound positive impact on global energy security and international efforts to combat climate change.”

India, Mukherjee said, has taken the necessary steps to secure nuclear materials and technology through comprehensive export control legislation and through harmonising and committing to adhere to Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines.

As regards the concerns on the transfer of the Enrichment and Reprocessing Technologies, Mukherjee assured, “India will not be the source of proliferation of sensitive technologies, including enrichment and reprocessing transfers. We stand for the strengthening of the non-proliferation regime. We support international efforts to limit the spread of ENR equipment or technologies to states that do not have them.”

“We will work together with the international community to advance our common objective of non-proliferation. In this regard, India is interested in participating as a supplier nation, particularly for Thorium-based fuel and in establishment of international fuel banks, which also benefit India,” he said.

Mukherjee said that India has a long-standing and steadfast commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of nuclear weapons. The vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, which Rajiv Gandhi put before the UN in 1988, still has universal resonance, he said.