New York, May 26: Sources close to the International Atomic Energy Agency at Vienna have said that India has always been ‘absolutely correct’ with inspectors visiting the parts of its nuclear operation that are subject to international inspection.
At the same time these sources, quoted by “The New York Times” in a Vienna dispatch, allege that India has divided some plants — one half open to inspection, and another half closed to visitors.
The transfer agreement with Canada provides for an inspection system but it specifically excludes outside controls on materials from within India. This exclusion left the Indians free to use their own supply of uranium.
According to the Agency sources, India does have some reactor installations that are subject to inspection under safeguard agreements covering transfer of material for them from the United States and Canada but it has also others that are off limits. They say that the Canadian-supplied thermal reactor in Trombay is included among the latter and the source of plutonium used in the May 18 explosion by India came from this.
The International Atomic Energy Commission is an autonomous inter-governmental organisation reporting to the United Nations.
While the Agency officially denied it had any advance proof that India was about to detonate a nuclear device, sources close to the Agency are quoted by “The New York Times” as saying its officials had been convinced for some time that India was preparing to set off a nuclear explosion “but were powerless to do anything about it”. This was because India was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the plutonium used in the recent explosion was “produced in a reactor that is off limits for inspection.”
