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Congress claims government has agreed to sign CTBT

The Congress today demanded that any decision on signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty be made only after taking all political parties, Parliament and the nation into confidence.

"A government on daily wages" should not take such a major decision on its own, K Natwar Singh, chairman of the All-India Congress Committee's foreign affairs cell, said.

Singh disclosed that American Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had given him an indication about the government's willingness to sign the CTBT. He declined to give details.

Singh said the Congress does not know on what basis the government is going for a deal with the United States on the treaty. He was responding to reports from Washington that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that India has pledged to sign the CTBT.

Singh, who had also raised the issue during zero hour in the Lok Sabha, wondered what the American reaction would be to External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's statement that India has not agreed to sign the CTBT in the present form.

He said the Congress had told Prime Minister A B Vajpayee before he left for the United Nations General Assembly session in September that any decision on the CTBT should be made only in Parliament and not in the UN. The government should not be in a hurry to sign the treaty, he said.

UNI

Pokhran II and after

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