Freezing N-deal to undermine India's credibility: Tharoor

NEW DELHI: Former UN Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor on Monday criticised the government for putting the Indo-US nuclear deal in virtual freeze and said it will 'seriously undermine' India's credibility in international arena.
    
"When you send your negotiators out to achieve frankly what many thought was impossible to achieve and they achieve it and then we are unable to sell it in our system, it is a pretty damn indictment of the way it functions in Delhi", Tharoor said during an interactive session at the launch of his latest book here.
    
"It does undermine seriously our credibility as an international actor," he said.
    
Noting that the nuke deal was not only about our growing relationship with US but to end India's nuclear paralytic status, he said "we are currently subject to sanction by 45 countries on our nuclear programme and in a position where we are unable to develop nuclear energy because we can't get any resources from outside.
    
"By this deal, we would actually end our paralyic status. We would not benefit a lot in terms of locked relationship with US. In fact, the Russians and the French to my best knowledge are looking forward to selling us the reactors in far larger numbers than American companies are willing to do" Tharoor said.
      
Tharoor said the Indo-US nuclear deal has also brought about a change in the way Washington looked at India because, "they said that India is not Pakistan, India is not Iran. We can do it with India and no one else."
    
Hinting that any delay in implementation of the nuke deal will not help India, he said "it is unlikely that under a Democrat government in the US it is going to be about on the same terms in a year and mid from now. We are missing not quite the bus but certainly the rocket", Tharoor added.
   
Talking about India's chances in getting a permanent seat in an expanded UN Security Council, he said the prospects as of now are slim.