Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday that a milestone accord signed by India and the US to access civilian nuclear technology was not a military alliance aimed against China.
"I want to dispel illusions. We are not ganging up against any country, least of all China. This is not a military alliance or any alliance against any country," Singh told parliament during a four-hour debate on his state visit last month to the US.
In the accord, Singh agreed to separate India's civilian and military nuclear programs, open its facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency scrutiny and work to prevent nuclear proliferation.
Singh argued the deal only aims to boost India's economic growth and added that it would not affect ties between Beijing and New Delhi.
US President George W. Bush said during Singh's visit to Washington that he would ask Congress and allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology as part of a new bilateral partnership.
The US had placed sanctions on India after its second round of nuclear tests in May 1998, but agreed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to waive those and other sanctions in return for support in what the US calls a war on terrorism.
India is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). US law bars export of technology that could aid a nuclear program of any country that has not signed the treaty.
In Washington Singh said his country would agree to "assume the same responsibilities and practices" as other leading nations with advanced nuclear technology, and pledged to maintain India's moratorium on nuclear testing.
The accord came after defense ministers from the two countries in June signed a 10-year agreement paving the way for joint weapons production, cooperation on missile defense and possible lifting of US export controls for sensitive military technologies.
Analysts see Washington's move to boost relations with India as part of a strategy to counter the growing influence of China, India's immediate neighbor.
But Singh said Wednesday: "We see new horizons in our relations with China. What we have done with the United States is not at the cost of China or any other country."
Instead, "we have broken new grounds in promoting more closer relations with that great neighbor of ours," he said, referring to a state visit to India by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) in April.
Singh and the Chinese leader signed an agreement in April that set out a roadmap to settle a border dispute without the use of force.
The two countries also set themselves a target of increasing bilateral trade to US$20 billion by 2008 from the current US$14 billion.
Singh said during his talks with the US leadership he underlined improving ties between the world's two most populous nations.
"I had made it quite clear that we we want to remain engaged with China," he said, adding that he sees "new horizons in our economic relations with that country."
Singh, the architect of India's economic reforms, insisted the accord was aimed at increasing cooperation in civilian nuclear technology to meet India's growing energy demands.
He said India's relations with the US are of great importance in helping his country move toward becoming the world's second or third largest economy.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS