"We run a full nuclear fuel cycle of our own and we would be happy to participate in providing a home for a nuclear fuel bank," foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on Saturday while delivering the keynote address to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ global forum.
This was an idea that has gained currency after IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei proposed it in 2006.
20 April 2008: Times of India
NEW DELHI: India would like to be part of an international bank for supplying nuclear fuel to nations that wanted to restart their nuclear energy programmes.
"We run a full nuclear fuel cycle of our own and we would be happy to participate in providing a home for a nuclear fuel bank," foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on Saturday while delivering the keynote address to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ global forum.
This was an idea that has gained currency after IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei proposed it in 2006.
It has been floated as part of the US-sponsored GNEP (global nuclear energy partnership) which India could have
joined if the nuclear deal had gone through.
Menon acknowledged that such discussions were a long way off because of the state of the nuclear deal.
Menon, however, said that India hoped to complete the nuclear deal with the US soon. He said: "It is our hope that civil nuclear cooperation with the US and other friendly countries will become possible soon."
After a speech that slickly glided across the state of India’s global engagement, without quite going into its depths, Menon told questioners that India did not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons though it had a right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Making the standard Indian case, Menon said, "Ultimately it is an issue of whether or not it (Iran) is implementing the obligations it undertook. It depends on technical assessments which are best done by the IAEA," he said.
Neither sanctions nor military action would work on Iran, he said, adding, "We need to have a system in place to which Iran is a party."
The current world order, he said, was one of "general un-alignment" where countries came together in informal alliances to deal with issues where they have a convergence of interests. A few years ago, US president George Bush described exactly such a world order calling it a "coalition of the willing".
Menon said, "What we see is the emergence of a global order marked by the preponderance of several major powers, with minimal likelihood of direct conflict amongst these powers. The result is a de-hyphenation of relationships with each other, of each major power engaging with all the others."
On climate change, Menon said, "Our per capita greenhouse gas emissions will not exceed those of the developed countries, even as we seek to develop our economy."
Stating that India had not followed the energy-intensive growth pattern of the OECD, Menon said, "The true free-loaders are those who have used up the world’s carbon space for their own development and want to keep occupying it."
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