Indian PM says nuclear deal does not prohibit atomic weapons testing

NEW DELHI (AP): India is free to test nuclear weapons under a much-touted nuclear deal with the United States, the country's prime minister said Monday as lawmakers opposed to the pact noisily demanded the agreement be scrapped.
The civilian nuclear cooperation deal reverses three decades of American policy by allowing the U.S. to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has never signed major international nonproliferation accords and has tested atomic weapons in the past.
Since it was first announced in July 2005 it has been praised as a cornerstone of an emerging partnership between India and the United States after decades on opposite sides of the Cold War divide. But it has also drawn criticism in both countries.
In India, many critics simply oppose closer ties with the United States, and some argue the pact undermines the country's cherished nuclear weapons program.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh insisted that was not the case in a speech to lawmakers Monday.
"The agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests if it is necessary in India's national interest,'' he said.
As he spoke, lawmakers from the Hindu nationalist opposition and from communist parties that support Singh but oppose the deal sought to drown out the prime minister, shouting, "cancel the nuclear deal!''
Similar protests by lawmakers earlier in the day had forced the house to adjourn until Singh spoke in the afternoon.
Singh's speech follows the sealing of a technical pact, known as the 1-2-3 agreement, which details how nuclear cooperation between New Delhi and Washington is to work.
India got nearly everything it wanted in the 1-2-3 agreement, including the right to stockpile and reprocess atomic fuel.
The deal also does not contain a test ban, and some clauses have been interpreted to mean that an Indian test would not automatically scuttle the deal if the move followed tests by either Pakistan or China, India's major rivals.
But the U.S. Congress last year included a test ban when it created an exception for India to American laws that prohibit civilian nuclear cooperation with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
That law, which was needed before the technical agreement could be worked out, has been seized on by Indian opponents as evidence that the U.S. is seeking to constrain the South Asian country's long-standing weapons program.
Although the Hindu nationalists have no chance of the defeating the deal, which does not need to be approved by Parliament, Singh's coalition government needs the communists for its parliamentary majority.
Still, few people believed the communists would bring down the government over the matter.
American critics, meanwhile, worry the deal will stymie U.S. anti-proliferation efforts, especially in Iran, and some have pointed to a lack of a test ban to support their case.
Despite those concerns, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman told reporters in New Delhi on Sunday that he was confident the pact would get the congressional approval it needs.
Lieberman, on a three-day visit to India, said he hoped the agreement would transform the U.S.-India relationship "into the most important bilateral relationship we have in the next century of our history.''
Once U.S. lawmakers approve the deal, India needs to make separate agreements with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an assembly of nations that export nuclear material.