'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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The Indo-US nuclear deal will “regularise” India’s relationship with the world and help in its development but there is no deadline to achieve it, says Mohammed ElBaradei, chief of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In an interview to CNN-IBN, ElBaradei said the deal will help end the nuclear non-proliferation regime of nuclear “have and have-nots”.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar:Do you believe that India will succeed in getting the Indo-US nuclear deal through by the end of this year?

Mohammed ElBaradei: What I believe that India eventually will have to rid itself from the restrictions imposed on it to be a fully-fledged member of the international community and to exchange freely nuclear technology both as recipient and as a supplier and to be at the forefront in effort to rid our world from nuclear weapons. Whether that will happen this month, next month through 123 Agreement, this is for the Government to decide.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But do you think that this is going to be inevitable within the Bush presidency?

Mohammed ElBaradei: I think every American administration will understand it. In fact most of the world nations now understand that Indian need nuclear energy for development.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But this will not happen during the Bush presidency?

Mohammed ElBaradei: Well, I hope it would but again that depends on the dialogue here in India on that issue. I think it would be good, obviously both from Indian government prospective and the US government perspective to come and finalize and operationalise the deal as early as possible. But there is no deadline.

What I see there is a bipartisan support in Congress for the US-India deal. So even there is change of administration I will be surprised if there is lack of support for that deal because as I said it makes a lot of common sense. It will help India to lift millions of people out of poverty. It will bring India to its right place at the negotiating table for nuclear arms control.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: You’ve been at the forefront of IAEA for many years now and your work has also been recognised by the Nobel Committee. You’ve also won the Nobel Peace prize with the IAEA. My question is how important is it for India to become a part of the global nuclear commerce for world peace?

Mohammed ElBaradei: I think it’s vitally important, both with regard of peaceful use of nuclear energy and now that there are renewed efforts to abolish nuclear weapons

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: Why? India hasn’t never really played a global role and it’s America that has led it.