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India flays Security Council's criticism of blasts

India today termed as ''completely unacceptable'', the presidential statement adopted by the United Nations Security Council yesterday condemning the nuclear tests conducted by it.

''We are surprised by this because the Council has never thought it necessary even to take cognisance of the many hundreds of nuclear tests carried out over the last 50 years, including in 1995 and 1996, when the de facto moratorium on testing, which the council recalls, was already in place'', an external affairs ministry spokesman said in a statement. The statement was released simultaneously in New York as well.

Kenya is currently the president of the Security Council while Japan, Bahrain, Zambia, Gabon, Brazil, Costa Rica, Portugal, Sweden and Slovenia are its non-permanent members. The five permanent members are the US, China, France, Russia and Britain.

The spokesman said the tests which the Indian scientists had conducted were not directed against any country. ''Tests by themselves, and the reconfirmation of a capacity which had been demonstrated in 1974, do not jeopardise peace and stability''.

He said the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to consider their elimination within a multilateral and time-bound framework, despite the end of the Cold War, continued to be the single largest threat to international peace and stability. ''It is because of the continuing threat posed to India by the deployment, overtly and covertly, of nuclear weapons in the lands and seas adjoining us that we have been forced to carry out these tests so that we can retain a credible option to develop these weapons should they be needed for the security of India's people, who constitute one-fifth of the world's population''.

UNI

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