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IAEA's safeguarding work is "spying activity," says former AERB chairman

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, Feb 25, IRNA
India-IAEA-Spy
Former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) A Gopalakrishnan said that most of the safeguarding work done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is "spying activity" on behalf of the United States.

Gopalakrishnan said that he had a view of these activities from inside the system.

"I have been inside the system. All the information (collected by the IAEA) is passed on to the Americans," he added while addressing a seminar organized by the Institute for Defence Studies and Anayses (IDSA) here yesterday.

Defending the Department of Atomic Energy's (DAE) position that India's fast-breeder program should not be placed in the civilian list of nuclear facilities as demanded by the United States, Gopalakrishnan said the "scientific community will fight to the last," a report published in a leading English daily said.

Speaking on DAE chief Anil Kakodkar's decision to go public on the need to keep the fast breeder program outside the proposed safeguards, Gopalakrishnan said Kakodkar was forced to speak out due to "arm-twisting" by the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of External Affairs.

"Kakodkar had to speak out on behalf of 20,000 engineers," the fromer AERB chief stated.

Claiming to speak on behalf of the DAE, Gopalakrishnan denied reports in a section of the press which said that the fast-breeder program would be exempted from safeguards for a few years only.

In a detailed presentation, he said the fast-breeder program, which had been developed indigenously, was put in place in the face of all kinds of sanctions imposed by the US.

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