Indo-US ties not dependent on N-deal: Mukherjee

WASHINGTON: The bilateral Indo-US ties will not fall apart if the civilian nuclear deal does not move forward, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said.

"I'm afraid that I do not pin hope only on, this particular arrangement (nuclear deal), because this arrangement we started talking off, during the visit of Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh to the US."

"But our relationship, you talked of 60 years relationship. That means from the very beginning, we have good relationship with USA. Sometimes there have been, in every relationship, there may be things that may be don't work, but nonetheless, we have good relations from the day one," Mukherjee said on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS.

The United States, he said, "Is the single largest country to us, the single largest industrial and technical collaboration we had with one country, that is the United States of America."

"Therefore, this is not the only matter on which our entire relationship depends. Of course, it is an important milestone, but I do not feel that if this will collapse, or if this will fails, we'll go back to the negative situation. It's not like that."

Mukherjee brushed aside a notion in the US that the nuclear deal is a complete capitulation to existing American laws that helps India reprocess fuel from a reactor to produce plutonium, which could be used in bombs, and it dilutes strict conditions that Congress has placed.

"So far the US laws are concerned, we are fully aware of US laws. But here, I would like to make one point quite clear: When we did not agree to sign Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is not that we disagreed with the ultimate objective of non-proliferation."

Mukherjee said that in 1989, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in his vision of nuclear disarmament, clearly pointed out that India can manufacture a weapon. "But we have kept our options open. We did not use our options."

"We did not graduate ourselves from the threshold level, because we want that there should be universally verifiable, non-discriminatory non-proliferation arrangement, all over the world, and every country, including the nuclear weapon states, should have equal rights, should have equal obligations, and there should be a total stoppage of both horizontal and vertical proliferation," he said.

"Unfortunately, international community did not listen to us. Therefore, because of our geopolitical situation, everyone is aware of it. I'm not going to repeat it. We had to go for the second nuclear explosions in 1998. But there, too, immediately after that, irrespective of sanctions or not, we voluntarily declared our nuclear doctrine."

"And three essential ingredients of that are, A, there will be no first use. B, it will not be used against non-nuclear weapon states. C, we declared ourselves voluntary moratorium on further test. D, we wanted to have minimum credible deterrent for self-defence, not for aggression," Mukherjee said.

"We can have a credible programme, and in my speech in the General Assembly, I have repeated that to us, our concept is non-proliferation and disarmament does not merely mean arm control or non-proliferation. Disarmament is more comprehensive. Non-proliferation and arms control, control of weapons of mass destructions are part of the disarmament.

"If we accept universally, verifiable, non-discriminatory, non-proliferation regime, we like to contribute its might, and that process, it is still open. We're still open to do that," Mukherjee said.

He was asked why the Non-Proliferation Treaty is so important to India and its development as a nation.