Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

India to have strategic N-force: Fernandes

India would soon have a strategic nuclear force to be used as a "strategic deterrence'' rather than tactical weapons, under an exclusive new command that would be given shape by the about-to-be-constituted National Security Council, defence minister George Fernandes has said.

"We are working towards evolving a nuclear command and control system over which the overall authority will rest with the executive. The effective exercise of command and control has to be political,'' Mr Fernandes said in an interview to the Janes defence weekly.

He said, "If the (nuclear) weaponisation option was not exercised,'' the entire exercise of nuclear testing would be rendered "inconsequential.'' Commenting on the nuclear de-targeting pact signed by the US and China last week during president Bill Clinton's summit meeting with his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin last Saturday, Mr Fernandes said, "If Beijing is not to target Washington, India would then be the prime target.''

"We are now (better) able to see through the kind of challenges that are before us today than earlier... The ground realities with regard to China have now become clear to us,'' he told the prestigious defence weekly.

Labelling the CTBT as "biased,'' Mr Fernandes said India was willing to discuss it with a view to removing its discriminatory aspects but only as a nuclear weapons state, a status which it intends to use to bring about global nuclear disarmament - "our objective since the 1950s.''

He said, "If the five acknowledged nuclear states - the UK, the US, Russia, France and China - are opposed to nuclear proliferation as they claim, let them band together and agree to total disarmament within a fixed time-frame.''

Mr Fernandes said through nuclear testing, India had not only gained status but exposed the "hollowness'' of the CTBT and nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). He declared the moving towards serial production of intermediate range ballistic missile, Agni, would continue saying, "It was security driven.''

The defence minister said new tests of the missile tested to a range of 1,400 km would be undertaken to enhance the range by another 1,100 km.