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New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had promptly condemned the nuclear bomb test carried out by North Korea, even before the United States had responded to the situation.
The MEA statement said that North Korea's nuclear test poses a threat to peace on the Korean peninsula. The Indian response was seen as a sign of being more American than the Americans.
But Indian strategy experts argue that there's nothing strange about the Indian stand. In an interview with Gulf News, Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis (IDA) here, has said that the Indian stance was in conformity with the view of the global community.
Asked about the validity of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), after the latest defiant act of North Korea, Uday Bhaskar has argued that the NPT became an inadequate doctrine by the end of the Cold War in 1989, and that the present moment presents a grey zone where there is no conceptual framework to face the new situation.
Excerpts from the interview:
Gulf News: Is it strange that India had condemned the North Korean nuclear test even before the United States did?
Uday Bhaskar: There was nothing strange about it. India's stance is in conformity with that of the global community.
Is it not contradictory that India, which had carried out a nuclear test, should object to the North Korean test?
India's case is on a completely different footing. No other state has shown the restraint, rectitude and responsibility that India has shown with regard to nuclear weapons. This is not the case with Pakistan and North Korea. Clandestine proliferation is a real danger in the case of North Korea, which has transferred nuclear know-how to countries like Iran and Libya. The further danger posed by North Korea, Iran and Pakistan is that the nuclear know-how may fall into the hands of non-state players. These are not issues in the case of India, and that is why its case stands on its own.
Is it right on the part of India to argue that the emergence of other nuclear weapons states - like North Korea and Iran - is not acceptable when India itself is a newcomer to the nuclear club?
The Indian stand is right because North Korea, Iran and Pakistan as nuclear weapon states pose a threat to regional and global stability. It is not so in the case of India. Unless Nepal and Bangladesh feel threatened by India and go in for their own nuclear weapons programme, the Indian status of a nuclear weapon state does not threaten neither regional nor global stability. This is not so in the case of the other three states.
Do you agree that the US response has been more calibrated in the case of North Korea, and that President George W Bush is now talking of containing nuclear know-how to North Korea and not talking in terms of condemning North Korean action per se?
Yes. The US had to respond differently because China and Russia were not in agreement with the US on the issue of taking direct action against North Korea.
Does the North Korean nuclear test reveal that the US cannot really impose NPT on other countries?
The Americans have been looking at the NPT from a narrow point of view. According to me the relevance of NPT ended with the closure of Cold War, and the Americans have not thought beyond the NPT. The North Korean test is a clear case of bolting the door after the horse has fled.
Would you say that at the moment, there is no conceptual framework for dealing with the situation that has arisen out of the North Korean test?
There is a grey area now. There is no clear framework to deal with the situation at the moment. India did not ever agree with the basis of NPT. New Delhi had always reservations about it. The Americans did not think about a post-Cold War situation where the Cold War concepts had become inadequate. NPT is one of them.
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