The United States will use the civilian nuclear deal to ensure India toes its line and join the nuclear non-proliferation regime, the president of the Indian Nuclear Society Dr Placid Rodriguez has said.
"Apparently, from what I feel, there is an agenda to bring under the deal as much as possible India into the non-proliferation regime that we have been opposing from the beginning," he said on the sidelines of a lecture in Bangalore.
Once the deal is through, the US would leverage it to see that India toes Washington's foreign policy and will make New Delhi its strategic ally, added Rodriguez who had a four-decade long association with the Indian Atomic Energy programme.
He was at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Mumbai from 1960 to 1974 and at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam -- where he was its director from 1992 to 2000 -- from 1974 to 2000.
According to him, the nuclear deal is "in the interest of the US itself - more than for us".
He added: "They [the US] have not built power stations in the last 30 years. If they now want to build new reactors, they will need people. Just like Information Technology, (nuclear) technology has to be more Indian".
Rodriguez also insisted that said the legislation passed in the US recently puts 'various riders that infringes upon our [India's] sovereignty'.
Rodriquez' comments close on the heels of the prime minister's assurance to address the scientific community's concerns.