Urging the key lawmakers to ratify the legislation, she assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the deal would not boost India's weapons arsenal.
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, saying it was in the interest of the United States and a net gain for non-proliferation.
“Continued isolation of our strategic partner is the wrong policy choice and it showed in the past that it had failed to achieve our goals in nonproliferation,'' Rice said here.
Urging the key lawmakers to ratify the legislation pending before the Congress, she assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the deal would not boost India's weapons arsenal, but help an important global power to overcome its growing energy needs.
Testifying before the Committee headed by Senator Richard Lugar here on Wednesday, Rice said the energy deal with India will not only enhance energy security but also benefit the environment besides providing as many as 3,000 to 5,000 direct jobs, perhaps three times more when the deal is completed.
The legislation seeks to exempt India from the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to allow civilian nuclear technology to the country.
Referring to criticisms of the deal, Rice said the nuclear initiative would not break or amend the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty but would only address the untenable situation.
Regarding India's strategic program, Rice said, ''It is more related to the prevalent conditions in the region and not on the quantity of weapons it needs.''
She emphasized that India has 50 tonnes of uranium and it would need only a small percentage of it for military use.
The nuclear initiative has also been welcomed by the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed El-Baradei and also by Russia, France and Britain, Rice pointed out.
Further, she said, since the political situation is continuing to improve between India and Pakistan and fears of an arms race would recede in the region.
She also argued that it is simply not credible to compare India to North Korea or Iran as India has never proliferated its nuclear technology and has an excellent non-proliferation record which has remained unaffected by the nuclear black-market scandal like the one in Pakistan where a senior government official was caught selling nuclear components to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
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