MUMBAI: Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of atomic energy commission (AEC), has revealed that Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, had deposed in the US Senate in 2008 that the sanctions which followed Pokhran 2 tests had no impact on India’s nuclear weapons programme.
Kakodkar stated this while speaking at a programme organized by the National Academy of Sciences on May 18, in New Delhi, to mark the golden jubilee of “Smiling Buddha”, code name for India’s first nuclear test at Pokhran in Rajasthan on this very day in 1974.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is home to the Manhattan Project, the secret US programme during World War II to design and develop the first atomic bomb. Hecker was the director of the lab from 1986 to 1997.
Kakodkar quoted Hecker as having told the Senate: “I don’t think our sanctions have particularly stopped its (India) nuclear weapons programme. What our sanctions have done is slow down their nuclear energy programmes.” Kakodkar also recalled Hecker’s statement to the effect that India is now a nuclear weapons country.
According to Kakodkar, Hecker further told the Senate: “It may actually, and I believe, be much in our benefit to have nuclear cooperation for nuclear energy with India.”
“They (India) will never get rid of the nuclear weapons they have now until there is global disarmament,” Kakodkar quoted Hecker as having said during his deposition before the US Senate.
R Chidambaram, also a former chairman of AEC and the architect of Operation Shakti, or Pokhran 2, when India conducted a series of five nuclear-weapon tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, who also spoke at the Saturday event, made it clear that “there is no real difference between a ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’ (PNE)” — the phraseology used by India to describe operation “Smiling Buddha” in 1974 — and a nuclear weapons test.
“It was only in terms of packaging,” Chidambaram said, while underscoring the need and importance of nuclear weapons for a country like India.
Kakodkar stated this while speaking at a programme organized by the National Academy of Sciences on May 18, in New Delhi, to mark the golden jubilee of “Smiling Buddha”, code name for India’s first nuclear test at Pokhran in Rajasthan on this very day in 1974.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is home to the Manhattan Project, the secret US programme during World War II to design and develop the first atomic bomb. Hecker was the director of the lab from 1986 to 1997.
Kakodkar quoted Hecker as having told the Senate: “I don’t think our sanctions have particularly stopped its (India) nuclear weapons programme. What our sanctions have done is slow down their nuclear energy programmes.” Kakodkar also recalled Hecker’s statement to the effect that India is now a nuclear weapons country.
According to Kakodkar, Hecker further told the Senate: “It may actually, and I believe, be much in our benefit to have nuclear cooperation for nuclear energy with India.”
“They (India) will never get rid of the nuclear weapons they have now until there is global disarmament,” Kakodkar quoted Hecker as having said during his deposition before the US Senate.
R Chidambaram, also a former chairman of AEC and the architect of Operation Shakti, or Pokhran 2, when India conducted a series of five nuclear-weapon tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, who also spoke at the Saturday event, made it clear that “there is no real difference between a ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’ (PNE)” — the phraseology used by India to describe operation “Smiling Buddha” in 1974 — and a nuclear weapons test.
“It was only in terms of packaging,” Chidambaram said, while underscoring the need and importance of nuclear weapons for a country like India.
