WASHINGTON: During her visit to the US in 1974, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had said New Delhi would sign a comprehensive test ban treaty if such an accord brings everybody in a "non-discriminatory" fashion, according to newly-released US documents.
Gandhi then told Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan that India would have to pursue nuclear energy and not solar energy given the country's needs and economic conditions, said the State Department documents relating to the US foreign policy.
"If a comprehensive test ban treaty were proposed which brought everybody in and was not discriminatory, Gandhi said India would be for it and support a treaty for international regulation and supervision of peaceful nuclear explosions," the documents quoted Moynihan as saying.
"The responsibility for moving in this direction rests with the other nuclear countries which have stockpiles of weapons. Her private secretary P N Dhar interjected that a first step would be for the two superpowers to agree to this approach," Moynihan said in a cable reporting on his conversation with the Prime Minister.
"To my suggestion that India would then expect that this subject would be raised at the forthcoming Moscow summit, the prime minister replied that 'this might be a good thing'."
"As her 'personal opinion, not necessarily that of the government's' the prime minister said that even for peaceful purposes if there were 'any alternatives I would rather use those than nuclear energy. We talked of solar energy. she made clear her feeling that the amounts of aid now being received could not in itself significantly affect India's economic conditions and needs which are so great. Hence the need to explore options such as nuclear energy," Moynihan added.
According to the documents, Gandhi said the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 was "discriminatory" as it was against the interests of developing countries.
"The prime minister noted that her father first proposed a test ban treaty at the UN. This was ridiculed, at the time, by both the US and the USSR...India did not sign NPT as it was discriminatory. China and France remain out of the NPT. The policy today is against the interests of developing countries. In the past few days both had set off explosions of greater yield than India's," the US diplomat said of his conversation.
"Pakistan had set off a hue and cry about India. But had said nothing when the Chinese tested. In 1965 at the United Nations (Zulfiqar Ali) Bhutto had ridiculed the idea of there being any need for a nuclear umbrella in as much as China's test was peaceful etc," Moynihan noted.
