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Nuclear programmes of India and Iran different: Rice
Washington, Sept 26. (PTI): Making it clear that the situations surrounding the nuclear programmes of India and Iran are "simply very different," the US today said that no comparison can be made between the two as New Delhi has been "very good" on proliferation matters "for its entire history.""The situations are just simply very different. And I think most people believe that India can be as a part of a broad proliferation regime actually helpful to the non-proliferation effort. I don't think there are many people who believe that about Iran," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with the New York Post. "...I've never been one who believes that in international politics every situation is the same. It's not. And you know, I know people make the argument about precedents and I just have to say to people, look, the situations are simply different," she said. The top State Department official went on to explain what the Bush administration has been saying all along--that Iran has a "terrible" non proliferation record and among other things had been dealing with the known Pakistani proliferator A.Q.Khan. "With Iran you have a state that signed onto the NPT, has been violating its obligations, including enriching without telling anybody at Natanz; has a terrible proliferation record; was apparently dealing with A.Q. Khan who, the last time I looked, never was very interested in civil nuclear power; and so doesn't -- and by the way, sits in a very volatile region," Rice said. "For a variety of reasons, prior to the NPT -- I'm sorry, just after the NPT India became a nuclear power and got left out of the nuclear club. That's really what happened. You know, the five who are so-called grandfathered into the NPT -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain -- it's almost an accident of history that they were in, you got the NPT and you were grandfathered in," Rice said. "Now, that then led to a kind of anomaly, which is you have a state then that never joined the NPT but pursued nuclear weapons, therefore not breaking any of its NPT obligations since it was not party to the NPT, has been very good on proliferation matters for its entire history, and has now -- as Mohamed ElBaradei put it, needs to be brought into the broad regime that is controlling proliferation," Rice remarked. Posted by: john 2006-09-26 |
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