US declines to liken India's nuke prog to that of N Korea

Washington, Oct 12: As done earlier by Britain, the Bush Administration has declined to bracket India's nuclear programme with that of North Korea, insisting that New Delhi has been a ''responsible actor'' in this sphere.

''We have certainly made that judgment,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at his daily briefing.

Mr McCormack also refused to draw parallel between Pakistan's programme and that of the impoverished hermit nation.

The spokesman made these observations when asked, ''North Korea might cite the examples of India and Pakistan, both of whom had detonated nuclear devices against the wishes of the United States, and now Pakistan is its major ally and Washington is ready to sell nuclear reactors to India. Why should North Korea not look at those instances and say, we can hang on, we can deal with the inevitable sanctions, and now in some time the tide will turn and we will be accepted as a nuclear power?'' In reply, Mr McCormack said, ''First of all, looking at the nature of each of those three governments in those countries -- North Korea, India and Pakistan -- I think they are all quite different.'' He said, ''In terms of India you have the world's largest multi-ethnic democracy. In terms of Pakistan you have a country that has made the strategic decision to ally itself with those who are promoting freedom and democracy around the world.'' McCormack said, ''Now, granted, it (Pakistan) is a country that is transitioning to its own form of democracy, making the changes necessary in terms of their domestic laws and their politics and even within their society that fundamentally realise Pakistan with the great, the broad sweep of the rest of the world, and that is towards greater freedom and democracy.'' ''In the North Korea regime,'' he pointed out, ''you don't have that. You have a regime that is actually going in the other direction. So it gets to the nature of these particular governments.'' Mr McCormack said, ''In terms of their particular programmes, each has different historical pathways and I would note that North Korea was in fact a treaty signatory to the non-proliferation regime and it broke its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't believe - certainly not India was a member of the Non-proliferation Treaty.'' He said the United States had made it very clear that ''we are for the peaceful development of nuclear power. That is the deal that the vast majority of countries around the world have signed up to in the (Nuclear) Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).'' He said the United State was clear about the civil nuclear deal that it had struck with India. ''Now we are working with the Congress to pass it to the benefit of the United States, to the benefit of India and to the benefit to the non-proliferation regime worldwide,'' the State Department spokesman said.

The spokesman also said, ''we are working very closely with the government of Pakistan on a whole wide array of issues in terms of their situation, where they stand vis-À-vis the rest of the world in terms of freedom and democracy and fighting terrorism.'' ''So the nature of these regimes is entirely different. In terms of our fundamental stance with regard to the proliferation of nuclear technology, development of nuclear weapons,'' he said.

UNI

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