India slams N Korea over nuclear test

He said the act amounted to “violation of international commitments” which could have an adverse effect on the peace of that region.

He termed Pyongyang’ s nuke test as unfortunate, saying: “Like others in the international community, we are concerned about the adverse effect such tests will leave on the peace and security in that region,” Krishna told media-persons shortly after taking over the new office.

An international outrage followed North Korea’s claim that it had carried out an underground nuclear test on Monday. Pyongyang’s “act of defiance” came close on the heels of US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller’s remark that getting India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT) was a “fundamental objective” of Washington.

India had not signed the NPT. New Delhi had termed the treaty as discriminatory, because it allowed major powers like the US, Russia, China, the UK and France to have nuclear weapons without any obligations to disarm.

India has been a nuclear weapon state since 1974. But, it has been put under pressure to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon country and to open its nuke arsenals to inspection.

Though Bush walked the extra mile to get the India-US nuclear deal clinched during the last days of his tenure, New Delhi was expecting more pressure from his successor President Barack Obama’s administration, given the Democrats’  hard-line stand on nuclear non-proliferation.

Washington is also expected to put pressure on New Delhi to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which puts a bar on the signatories from conducting nuclear tests. India has, of late, toned down its opposition against the CTBT, but it still maintains that it would not sign the treaty in its present form.

Just before the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) had granted a waiver to India, New Delhi had stated that it had put a unilateral moratorium on nuke tests. Krishna’s remark on the first day of his office seemed to be an attempt to de-hyphenate India from North Korea after Gottemoeller put the both in the same bracket along with Pakistan and Israel.

Apart from resisting pressure from the US on the NPT and CTBT, the new External Affairs Minister will also have to spearhead New Delhi’s diplomatic efforts to move the India-US nuke deal forward.

We’re are against proliferation: Antony
New Delhi, dhns: Defence Minister A K Antony has expressed serious concern over  North Korea’s underground nuclear test. He said India is “against nuclear proliferation”.

Antony told reporters here after taking charge of the Defence Ministry for a second term, that New Delhi was concerned about Pyongyang’s act.