"India, US Open Can of Nuclear Worms"

[GreenPartyVoter]

NEW DELHI - More than 30 years after the United States walked out of a nuclear cooperation agreement with India, because it conducted an atomic test, the two countries have agreed to resume collaboration in civilian nuclear energy.

A joint-statement issued by US President George W. Bush and visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington on Tuesday said the US would now ''work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy and trade with India.''

Essentially, this means that Washington has now accepted India as a nuclear weapons-state (NWS) although it is euphemistically referred to as ''a state with advanced nuclear technology''.

That would entail a dilution of the global nuclear regime, founded on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which only recognizes five NWSs. All five crossed the atomic threshold before 1967 while India became a self-declared NWS only in 1998.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0720-08.htm

[GreenPartyVoter]

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