Nuclear energy is key to India`s economic future, the country`s prime minister said Friday - remarks clearly aimed at defending a historic atomic energy deal with the United States from critics at home.
Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh never directly mentioned the deal, his comments were a reiteration of a familiar argument that both he and U.S. President George W. Bush have used to promote the pact since it was first announced in July 2005.
Singh`s defense of the deal came a day after the government agreed to create a committee to examine the deal before it is implemented, a move some fear could lead to delays that would ultimately scuttle the pact.
The committee had been a chief demand of the prime minister`s communist political allies, who are leading the opposition to the pact, which they say could undermine India`s nuclear weapons program and independent foreign policy.
The deal allows the United States to send nuclear fuel and technology to booming, but energy-starved India, which has been cut off from international atomic markets for the past three decades by its refusal to sign nonproliferation accords and it`s testing of nuclear weapons.
The India-U.S. pact - which requires still-to-be-negotiated agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an organization of countries the export atomic material - would bring New Delhi into the global nuclear mainstream.
`India is now too important a country to remain outside the international mainstream in this critical area,` Singh told scientists and engineers at the Tarapur nuclear facility near Mumbai.
`We need to pave the way for India to benefit from nuclear commerce without restrictions,` he said, adding that the deal would allow the country to import cutting-edge technologies that could be used in many industries, not just for generating nuclear power.
Singh said the government`s target of producing 20,000 megawatts of power from nuclear plants by 2020 could be doubled if India could cooperate with other countries.
`There is today talk the world over of a nuclear renaissance and we cannot afford to miss the bus or lag behind those global developments,` he said.
Aside from the agreements with the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group, U.S. lawmakers also need to approve technical details of the pact before atomic trade can begin.
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