[Reuters]

Published date: 27th May 1998

27 May 1998

Reuters News

English

(c) 1998 Reuters Limited

NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India’s nuclear tests alone will not make the country a major power unless twinned with rapid economic development, Defence Minister George Fernandes said on Wednesday.

“I believe that India has remained a very soft state, soft in every sense of the term,” Fernandes told Reuters in an interview, his first since the series of five tests on May 11 and 13 which caused a global uproar.

“The Indian people have to recognise the fact that a Pokhran II does not make India a major power or any kind of power,” he said, referring to Pokhran, the desert site where India also conducted its first underground test in May 1974.

“It is the economic development of this country, a much faster and a much bigger growth rate … these are the things that ultimately matter.”

Asked if India would press ahead with its missile programme, particularly the development of the Agni ballistic missile, Fernandes said: “I think these two programmes (nuclear and missile) are complementary to each other.”

“When we said that India will now be a nuclear weapons state, implied in it was that India will have to
weaponise,” he added.

He did not demur when asked if this meant India would move to build a nuclear arsenal and said: “Otherwise this test will have gone in vain. After all we had a test in 1974 and it went in vain. Nobody should believe that what we did this time will also be allowed to go in vain.”

But he repeated Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s pledge that India would now observe a moratorium on further testing.

“I can assure you that the tests have given us whatever inputs we needed and there is no reason why we should go in for more tests. When the prime minister says it is a moratorium, it is so. Amen,” he said.

During the interview Fernandes explained India’s position on the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), both of which it has refused to sign on the grounds that they are discriminatory.

The CTBT is very discriminatory, but the CTBT discrimination is rooted in the NPT, because the NPT says that those who produced nuclear weapons and those who continued to test nuclear weapons before a particular date, they will be termed as the nuclear weapons states, and there are five states.”

Fernandes said the CTBT labelled India a “nuclear threshold state” along with Pakistan and Israel.

“We can’t sign a treaty which says we are a threshold state because we say that we are a nuclear weapons state … which means instead of five, it will be six (states). How to do it is the question on which one has to talk. In a manner of speaking … back to the drawing board.”

Fernandes, a lifelong socialist who lists his professions as “trade unionist, agriculturist, political activist and Journalist”, sounded a conciliatory note on China, in contrast with earlier hawkish remarks that painted a picture of encirclement by hostile neighbours.

“China constantly has said whatever disputes it has it wants to settle them through peaceful means. That is our position also.

So far as existing problems on which talks have been going on now for a very long time, on these Issues
there seems to be an understanding that we need to pursue confidence-building measures and come to some solution. I believe this process will continue.”

Asked if he believed Pakistan, whose government is under tremendous pressure to counter India’s nuclear tests, would follow suit, Fernandes said:

“The whole world got rattled and I’m sure our neighbours were bound to get rattled … Nobody can stop them, unless the Americans and/or the Chinese use the enormous influence they have with Pakistan.

“Otherwise Pakistan will do what as a sovereign state it would like to do. I don’t think anyone has the right to tell Pakistan what it should do or should not do.”

He said he was more concerned about Pakistan’s continuing support for Moslem separatists in Kashmir, over which the neighbours have fought two wars.

“We also have a problem which is taking a toll of human life in Kashmir and some other parts of the country, like the Northeast. I believe there is (Pakistani) involvement (in the northeast) and that has become obvious. So I would want Pakistan not to continue with the things it has been doing.”

He said sanctions slapped on India by the United States after the nuclear tests would affect a few areas of defence cooperation including New Delhi’s plans to build a light combat aircraft.

“In some areas of defence production there are a few problems. But I think there are various sources
available … If someone closes shop then we’ll go to some other shop.

“I am for indigenisation, but where security is concerned I won’t sit on any similar principle to the detriment of the wider national security. So what is needed will be done. If it is something that one has to buy in the market, we’ll buy it.”