New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS) India has made it clear that it will never sign the “flawed and discriminatory” Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has voiced reservations about a report released Tuesday that seeks to club New Delhi with Islamabad without taking into account their different nuclear histories.
The report by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, a joint Australia-Japan initiative, came out with a report Tuesday that targets 90 per cent reduction in world’s nuclear stockpile by 2025 and asks the US and Russia to reduce the number of their warheads to 500 each.

The commission comprises 15 commissioners, including India’s former national security adviser Brajesh Mishra and Lt. Gen (retd.) V.R. Raghavan, and twenty six other advisers.

“The key recommendation is to get serious about a world without nuclear weapons because there are far more risks associated with the continuation of nuclear weapons these days than there are with any benefits,” former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, a co-char of the commission, said in Melbourne.

India has welcomed some aspects of the report like the emphasis on deligitimisation of nuclear weapons and an exhortation to eight nuclear armed states to adopt a non-first-use or a modified no-first-use policy, but has issues with some of its contentious formulations, informed sources said.

The report advocates applying equivalent non-proliferation and disarmament obligations to the three nuclear weapon states outside the NPT, which includes India, Pakistan and Israel (it calls them “three elephants outside the room”). India feels this ignores the differentiated nuclear histories and records of all the nuclear armed states, the sources said.

The advocacy of non-proliferation disciplines for non-NPT states also ignores India’s existing commitment and responsible behaviour in comparison with the the five official nuclear weapon states and Pakistan.

India has suffered on account of proliferation activities allegedly indulged in by China that aided Pakistan’s nuclear programme and the proliferation network managed by Dr A.Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme, analysts point out.

India has said it will never sign the NPT and will like to move to a Nuclear Weapons Convention aimed at universal nuclear disarmament.

“We should not expect any changes in the NPT to accommodate India. Any possibility of including India will open a Pandora’s box,” the sources with access to official thinking said.

Early this month, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, India’s designated sherpa for the Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by the US in April next year, attended a preparatory meeting of the summit in Tokyo where she reiterated India’s established positions on NPT and CTBT, but indicated India’s endorsement on the ongoing global discussion on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Prime Minister Manhmohan Singh goes to Washington for a nuclear security summit in April next year that will focus on securing nuclear materials and combating atomic smuggling.

“India welcomes the renewed international interest in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. We have been a consistent advocate of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Manmohan Singh had said in Washington.