ramana wrote:El-Baradei was in New Delhi getting an award from GOI for the NSG waiver etc.
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So see the recent outbursts from this POV. There is pressure on the CTBT. A guest getting an award from GOI is saying this!
If GOI says the POKII were enough then the corollary is why do you need to keep option open?
Ramana,
Can GoI afford to say POKII was
not enough? Let's forget all this discussion on fizzle ya sizzle for the moment and accept it was a fizzle.
Now even if GoI knows it's a fizzle do you think it will publicly disgrace RC and hand him a public whipping as one former stalwart has thundered here?
I don't think that how real politic works. What GoI will do IMO is keep the pretense of POKII being a success, stick with RC et al and
make sure that the option to test in future is not given away.
In fact I get a sense that Gol does not/will not give up the test option even if POKII was a resounding success. There will be another round of tests for sure. At a point of time when the Indian economy will be too big for anyone to sanction it and remain relatively unscathed by doing so. I personally reckon sometime after 2016-2017 or so
(provided Munna on the western border is not goaded to start a war to hit the Indian economy before that).
Hence in all this confusion what needs to be looked at carefully is the noises that come out from GoI regarding CTBT. Note Krishna's comments and also note MMS comment that India will adhere to voluntary moratorium. Voluntary moratorium only comes to play if India does not sign CTBT - once you sign up there's nothing voluntary about not testing.
It would be naive to expect El-Baradei to say anything (about CTBT) other than what he said in New Delhi, that's his job actually. I think what is far more significant is the fact that he let it slip that the international committee has resigned itself to the fact that India will not sign NPT. That means India will have to be accepted into P5 - by making it P6 - before NPT talks can start. And NPT loses its teeth as long as India stays outside the tent. I think that's a tremendous plus.
So bottomline, don't listen to what international experts (we seem to adore them, right from the former AEC boss down to the hoi polli on BRF) say India should do or is about to do regarding CTBT.
Instead look at the noise bytes that come out from Naya Dilli regarding the shitty bitty. IMHO I haven't yet seen anything which shows that India's position has changed from what that fantastic lady A Ghosh outlined all those years ago.
JMT