Former United Nations Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor on Monday criticised the government for putting the India-United States nuclear agreement in virtual freeze. Tharoor said the deal will seriously undermine India's credibility in the international arena.
"When you send your negotiators out to achieve frankly what many thought was impossible to achieve and they achieve it and then we are unable to sell it in our system, it is a pretty damn indictment of the way it functions in Delhi," Tharoor said during an interactive session at the launch of his latest book in New Delhi.
"It does undermine seriously our credibility as an international actor," he said.
Noting that the nuclear agreement was not only about India's growing relationship with the US but also about ending India's nuclear paralytic status, he said, "We are currently subject to sanctions by 45 countries on our nuclear programme. We are in a position where we are unable to develop nuclear energy because we can't get any resources from outside. By this deal, we would actually end our paralytic status. We would not benefit a lot in terms of locked relationship with the US. In fact, the Russians and the French to my best knowledge are looking forward to selling us the reactors in far larger numbers than American companies are willing to do," Tharoor said.
Tharoor added that the Indo-US nuclear deal has also brought about a change in the way Washington looked at India because, "they said that India is not Pakistan, India is not Iran. We can do it with India and no one else."
Hinting that any delay in the implementation of the nuclear deal will not help India, he said, "It is unlikely that under a Democrat government in the US it is going to be on the same terms in a year from now. We are missing not quite the bus but certainly the rocket."
On India's chances of getting a permanent seat in an expanded UN Security Council, Tharoor said the prospects as of now are slim