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US rejects India's 'nuclear nation' claim

The fallout of India's recent thermonuclear tests is getting curiouser and curiouser. Not to mention the fact that it also seems to be acquiring a rather petty undertone.

On the one hand, India has made it a prestige issue to be named a nuclear state -- the sixth in the world. And the United States seems equally determined to put its own prestige on the line, to deny India that 'honour' -- if honour is indeed the right word.

US State Department spokesman James P Rubin, responding to the Indian demand for inclusion in the N-club, said that as per international law, a nuclear weapons state by definition should have detonated a device before 1968.

Simultaneously, Rubin also virtually ruled out India's claim for a permanent membership of the UN Security Council. "If they think they have helped themselves move closer to that seat, they should think again," he said, pointing out that the US had supported the claims of Germany and Japan for permanent seats mainly because they are prominent adherents of the non-proliferation mindset.

Characterising India's decision to press for inclusion to the nuclear club as "another deplorable step", the state department spokesman called on New Delhi to refrain from taking further steps to isolate itself from the international community.

When Rubin's attention was drawn to India's expressed desire to sign the CTBT as a full fledged nuclear state, he responded: "I am in no position at this point to analyse what kind of nuclear capability India has. Clearly, explosions took place; clearly, they were nuclear explosions and clearly, India is paying a very very high price for them."

Rubin said even if the US was so inclined, classifying India as a nuclear nation would require an amendment to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, which could be quite cumbersome. "Not that I am saying we would even consider it, merely pointing out the legal situation here," he said.

The US thinking, Rubin said, was for India to join the CTBT, and put the brakes on its slide away from the international mainstream. "The Indian government at this point appears to care more for narrow political interests, than for its role in the international community," he argued.

When his attention was drawn to an official Indian denial that New Delhi had lied to Washington about its intentions, Rubin replied: "Frankly, it was the Indian government that first said, officially, that no decision about going nuclear would be taken without a thorough government review, at the highest levels. Since then, on more than a dozen different occasions, high level representations have been voluntarily made by New Delhi to Washington that restraint would continue, that a lengthy review would take place. In the light of what India has now done, we regard those representations as misrepresentations.

"We feel seriously misled, and it is hard to conduct diplomacy with another country when its highest level officials mislead you so severely and seriously."

In response to the initial charge, New Delhi had responded to the effect that only a few of its ministers were aware of the impending tests, and that lower level diplomats had remained ignorant until after the event. This, New Delhi maintained, was why the diplomats unintentionally ending up misleading their counterparts abroad.

"Whether they did not know, or whether they did know and now are saying they did not know, we ourselves have no means of knowing," Rubin said. "What we know is that we have to be able to rely on what senior Indian officials tell us, if we are able to conduct diplomatic relations with them. Given what has happened, we feel unable to rely on their veracity now, and that is why all this is so troubling."

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