Opposition stalls Bush’s nuclear non-proliferation plan: WSJ

WASHINGTON: Being resisted by many countries including India, US President George W Bush’s nuclear non-proliferation plan has stalled, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

“The open possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan and their ability to escape serious international punishment because of their strategic value to the US and its allies have weakened the longstanding taboo against obtaining nuclear arms,” it added. The most difficult debate internationally, it stated, might be Bush’s proposal for an across-the-board ban on sales of nuclear-fuel technology to nations that did not already possess full-scale plants.

The British and French were instead proposing that new countries should still be allowed to go into the business if they met a set of criteria that proved they had no weapons ambitions, a criteria that the US argued proliferators could outwit, it added. Britain and other allies warned that nuclear powers needed to move ‘gingerly’ between promoting reform and provoking a backlash from the nuclear have-nots, who might react to pressure by walking away from all international controls, it reported. online

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