Iran has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes: India

NEW DELHI, April 19 (KUNA) -- India Saturday expressed concern with the existence of a nuclear weapons state in its neighbourhood but said Iran has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. "It is not in India's interest to have another nuclear weapons state in its neighbourhood but Iran has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy subject to its international obligations,"India's Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said in a seminar organised by the Britain-based International Institute for Strategic Studies here today.
Menon said while Iran has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy it also has an obligation to the global commitments that it has made. "Ultimately it is an issue of whether or not it is implementing the obligations it undertook. It depends on technical assessments which are best done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," he said. He called for new international consensus on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. "We need to have a system in place to which Iran is a party, " he said, adding, "Sanctions or military action is not a lasting solution. It will only aggrevate the situation. We need to evolve something that involves Iran." On India's nuclear energy programmes, Menon said: "We run a full nuclear fuel cycle of our own and we would be happy to participate in a nuclear fuel bank." The idea of an international nuclear fuel bank was put forward by IAEA Director General Mohammad El Baradei last year. It envisages creation of an international uranium enrichment facility from where countries can get nuclear fuel for power plants. On the civil nuclear agreement with the US, Menon said: "We hope civil nuclear cooperation with the US and other countries will become possible soon." On probable India-Pak nuclear flare up, Menon said: "Immediately after the 1998 nuclear tests, both India and Pakistan realised that they needed to be in touch with each other. In 1999 both agreed on a series of nuclear confidence building measures." (end) dr.bz.
KUNA 191433 Apr 08NNNN