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'Moratorium' announcement shows govt had no clue about Pak tests

It is clear the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had not foreseen that Pakistan will carry out nuclear tests so soon or they would not have announced a moratorium, Congress spokesman Salman Khurshid has said.

The former minister of state for external affairs asked whether the government would have stuck to the moratorium had Pakistan exploded more or larger nuclear devices than those exploded at Pokhran on May 11 and 13.

He said it was also clear that the implications of the Pokhran tests had not been assessed. He said the government had so far failed to answer questions about the threat perception in April which made Vajpayee give the go-ahead to the scientists and engineers.

He said it required a ''lot more toughness not to explode a nuclear device. The Congress governments had on a cost-benefit analysis felt that these tests were not necessary.''

UNI

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