Rahul Gandhi has great commitment to India: Blair

THE BLAIR PROJECT: Blair said that N-energy was essential to save the climate as well as for a nation's security.

        

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Keywords: Tibet, China

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: But what about the developmental activities that China is perusing in Tibet?

Tony Blair: Well I think that it is important that China develops its economy. Now, how it does that in different parts of the country is a matter of debate and discussion. I keep telling people to understand what the Chinese preoccupation is. It is very important for China to keep political stability with the great process of economic development underway. Because China is not only Beijing and Shanghai.It is also hundreds of millions of people in the interiors of the country that need the economic growth and that need the development and whose standards of loving at the moment are way, way apart from those who are living on the east coast, where there is a highly industrialised economy.

So, what is important here all the time is to understand that China has certain pre-occupations which are internal.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: As a British prime minister, as a world leader, what is your understanding? Does China understand the problems that Tibetians have?

Tony Blair: Well, this again is something which China has to resolve with the people in Tibet. In the broadest terms, I think it is important that we in the west have some understanding of the challenges that China faces. This absolutely central preoccupation of how do we industrialise a population of hundreds of millions of people that are going to move from an agrarian economy into an industrial economy is important. The reason is that if China quadruples its economy and we do not find a way through the science and technology of allowing that growth to happen in an environmentally sustainable way, then even if America and Europe cut their emissions, then the emissions from China and India will make up for that cut.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: This leads me to the next point, which is nuclear energy. Do you believe that there will be a clean and environmentally safe way for India to pursue this?

Tony Blair: This is a very controversial issue, but this is one of the reasons why this issue is going to be taken out by pressure group politics. I honestly do not see how we are going to solve the issue of the climate without a significant and substantial contribution from nuclear energy. I just don't even see it. And there is new technology being developed the whole time, which generates a lot less of the high-intensity waste and there are countries like Britain which have had half-a-century of nuclear power.

Vidya Shankar Aiyar: So you are saying that we should just get used to living with nuclear waste, but should pursue nuclear energy?