'Nuke deal will help India in reducing poverty'

A FAIR DEAL: ElBaradei says the nuclear agreement with India is fair and reasonable.

      

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Mohammed ElBaradei: India has always been a leader since Prime Minister Nehru’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But yet the world hasn’t moved towards it. It’s only gone towards the permanent extension of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty–which you believe wouldn’t really work.

Mohammed ElBaradei: That’s correct. But if you look few months ago, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry—four people with immense experience in Cold War and defence strategy—came with a piece saying we need to abolish nuclear weapons. They have become increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective. I cannot exclude India as a nuclear weapons state—it has one-sixth of world’s population—from that debate and dialogue.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But all these people you mention have been important to US government in past. Today it’s the conservatives, the neo-cons as they call it, who are ruling the roost in America. The transition doesn’t seem to be hopeful either.

Mohammed ElBaradei: Usually the message comes clearly. I see Mr Barak Obama (US Senator and Presidential candidate) talking about rolling back nuclear weapons. I see other leaders talking about it—so this is new phenomena.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But you don’t hear Hillary Clinton talk about it…

Mohammed ElBaradei: I hope she will. I hope everybody will because as I said the regime we have now is not sustainable but that’s one aspect of it…

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: By regime, you are talking of non-proliferation?

Mohammed ElBaradei: Yes, non-proliferation arms control. Right now, we have a regime where we tell every country, ‘you cannot have nuclear weapons’ but the Big Five nuclear weapons. We cannot have a regime of haves and have-nots.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: This is the classic argument India has been making over the years against the NPT. You are agreeing with that position?

Mohammed ElBaradei: India has decided that NPT does not fit its security concern and so India has not joined it. I think India’s solution has to come within the global Nuclear Arms Control Association. That’s what I am very supportive of India regularising its relationship with international community and not just the non-proliferation regime in general. So it will be at the front seat when this negotiation starts. But more importantly also, India is a large developing country. It needs all the energy it can get. It needs nuclear energy as a clean source of energy.