Indo-US nuke agreement is an arms deal: Ex-US Senator

New Delhi:  Former US Senator Larry Pressler has said the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement is more of an “arms deal”, but the focus of the bilateral partnership should be on “agriculture, technology and health care”.

Pressler, who has served as chairman of the US Senate’s Arms Control Subcommittee, yesterday also had a word of caution for Pakistan. He said if Pakistan did not act on terrorism, the Donald Trump administration could declare it “a terror state”.

“I would love to see peaceful use of nuclear energy, but I am worried that so far it (Indo-US nuke agreement) has mostly been an arms deal. It seems to me that much of the new agreement is a large arms sale to Indians,” Pressler said.

The former US Senator was speaking during the launch of his book ‘Unveiling Neighbours in Arms’. The Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in October 2008, ending India’s isolation by the West in the nuclear and space arena. The deal has given a significant boost to India’s nuclear energy production.

Pressler claimed the then US president Barack Obama’s visit to New Delhi was “largely an arms sale trip”. When asked whether the United States could declare Pakistan a “terror state”, he said, “Unless Pakistan does not change certain things, it may happen. Moreover, the Donald Trump administration is making sounds that they are getting near this. And I hope they do”.

Pressler is known for advocating amendments in the 1990s which banned most of the economic and military assistance to Pakistan, unless the US president certified on an annual basis that Islamabad did not possess nuclear explosive devices.