Indo-US nuclear deal has negative implications

Nuclear disarmament activists participating in a conference in Mumbai urged the United Progressive Alliance government to withdraw from further negotiations on the nuclear deal with the United States asserting the agreement had 'multi-faceted negative implications.'

At a two-day international conference, which concluded in Mumbai on Monday, they requested the government to support global abolition of nuclear weapons instead of going ahead with the nuclear deal with US as 'it will only increase the nuclear arms race and race of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asian region.'

"Situation of weaponisation and associated dangers have not changed much from the cold war days," John Hallam, a veteran anti-nuclear weapon campaigner and Friends of Earth, Australia member said.

"The Indo-US nuclear deal does not take the world forward and the disarmament group feels that it is going in the negative direction," he said.

Sukla Sen of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace said the deal has 'flouted' all traditions of nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Hamsa ABD El-Hamid of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation, Egypt said. "It is important to make the Middle-East free from Weapons of Mass Destruction -- chemical or nuclear -- but the Indo-US deal seems to promote the proliferation and arms race in the region."

"India should not go in for the deal for small benefits, which will lead to greater danger to the region in relation to disarmament and peace," Hamsa said, adding, "since the deal is not yet signed, we have time to think and do the things good for the people of the region."