A day after his Congress party decided to set up a panel to examine the nuclear accord with the United State to pacify its Left supporters threatening to withdraw support to his government over the pact, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday ruled out abandoning the deal.
"There is today talk the world over of a nuclear renaissance and we cannot afford to miss the bus or lag behind those global developments," Singh said at an event to dedicate two new nuclear power reactors in Tarapur in the Indian western state of Maharashtra.
India, he said, was too important a country to remain outside of the international nuclear mainstream.
New Delhi has to secure approval from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on safeguards for reprocessing spent fuel as part of the deal with the United States, something Singh's Left supporters, whose backing is crucial for survival of his government, are staunchly opposed to.
"When a country of the size of India begins to grow at the rate of 9 percent per annum, with the prospect of even higher rates of growth, energy becomes a critical issue," Singh said in an emailed statement from Tarapur.
Singh said fast reactor technologies should be expeditiously developed and efforts intensified to locate additional uranium resources in the country.
Source: Xinhua
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