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President says Indian nuke tests were weapons of peace

President K R Narayanan on Tuesday asserted that India's nuclear tests were aimed at the liquidation of the nuclear club and not to blast a way into it.

"Our objective is to awaken the people of the world and work together with all nations for the liquidation of any such club along with the immense stock of weapons of mass destruction stored in the cellars of this exclusive club," the President said.

Inaugurating the birth centenary celebrations of Dr K S Krishnan in Bangalore, he said the nuclear demonstration would act as a catalytic agent in the international efforts to eliminate such weapons from the face of the earth.

Pointing out that the objective of scientific development in the country was to use it for peaceful purposes, he said: "No country has believed in using science and technology for peaceful purposes and strove to do so as India has done during the last 50 years of Independence. No country has pleaded so passionately and consistently for disarmament and the elimination of nuclear weapons as India has done."

Stressing that India had refrained from nuclear weaponisation for 24 years, he said the country's pleadings for disarmament went unheeded. "On the other hand the powers were only refining and sophisticating the destructive capacity of their vast nuclear weapon arsenals," Narayanan added.

UNI

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