The regional passport office in Madurai has issued a notice to S P Udayakumar, convenor of a movement spearheading the stir against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, asking him to surrender his passport within 15 days. The letter from the Madurai (south) region passport office asked him to surrender his passport within that period as 98 criminal cases are pending against him. If he fails to do so within that period, the document would be impounded.
Ahead of his two-nation visit beginning on Saturday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday met President Pratibha Patil and discussed various issues, including internal security and Indo-Pak matters. A Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said the meeting lasted for nearly an hour. "The two leaders discussed the upcoming session of Parliament, and the forthcoming visit of the prime minister to Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit," said a press release.
The new treaty will require the United States and Russia to reduce -- by 30 per cent below the levels in a treaty signed in 2002 -- the number of nuclear warheads they have deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based ballistic missiles, and bombers.
The US-hosted Nuclear Security Summit, to be attended by leaders of 40 countries including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is expected to issue a communique endorsing a global crackdown on illicit trade of nuclear material. A draft communique also calls for securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within 4 four years, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
He was asked whether there are terrorist organisations that now have the capability of detonating a nuclear device in the United States.
India is determined that its expanded nuclear power programme will follow the highest standards of nuclear safety and security, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said while addressing the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the government has an "open mind" on the nuclear liability bill and is ready to discuss any "deficiencies" in the proposed legislation that is facing stiff opposition from BJP and Left parties.
Pakistan appears to be reconciled to a long haul in clinching a civil nuclear deal with the US with President Asif Ali Zardari today saying it took nine years for India to secure an atomic pact with Washington.
The US and Russia, countries with the largest nuclear stockpiles, have reached an agreement to considerably reduce their atomic weapons, in a landmark deal that could "reset" relations between the Cold War rivals. The agreement has been reached between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Demetry Medvedev and will be signed by the two leaders in Prague on April 8, the the White House announced on Friday.
The United States has asked Pakistan to first take necessary steps to address the non-proliferation concerns of the international community, especially on rogue scientist A Q Khan's clandestine network, as a basis for consideration of a request for a civilian nuclear deal.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi seems to be in a denial over failure in getting a commitment from the US the civilian nuclear deal.
Amid speculations that the United States might offer Pakistan a civil nuclear deal similar to India during the upcoming strategic dialogue on March 24, the US embassy in Islamabad has rejected such reports, saying there are no negotiations on between the two countries on the issue.
The Congress insisted on Monday that the nuclear liability bill was in "public interest" in tune with international paradigms and attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party and Left parties for opposing it, saying they had "blinkered vision".
The United States on Monday dismissed reports that it was mulling negotiations on a civil nuclear agreement with Pakistan. "The US has not entered (into) negotiations on a civil nuclear agreement with Pakistan," said a spokesperson of the US embassy in the capital, a day after media reports said Washington may discuss Islamabad's request for cooperation in setting up nuclear power plants in the country.
Facing stiff opposition over the Nuclear Liability Bill, the government on Friday said it will consult all political parties before tabling the draft legislation in Parliament. "
The uncertainty over the fate of the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill in Parliament has caused a considerable amount of concern to members of the United States-India Business Council, as some of them had lobbied feverishly in the US Congress to get the agreement approved.USIBC President Ron Somers voiced his concerns at an interaction with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, during her six-day visit to the United States
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties have already indicated opposition to the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill that is key to operationalise the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal. The Bill pegs the maximum amount of liability in case of each nuclear accident at Rs 300 crore to be paid by the operator of the nuclear plant.
'Its internal security concerns are greater.'
Harsh V Pant says leakage of Pakistan's nukes is a bigger worry than the number of warheads in its arsenal.
Welcoming the North Korean decision to suspend its nuclear activities as a "positive step" forward, the White House has said it took a cautious note based on its past experience, adding this now needs to be followed by actions.
The US stepped up pressure on Pakistan to get access to disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan, accused of proliferating nuke technologies to Iran and North Korea, for questioning.
An Israeli military strike can at the most delay Iranian nuclear programme by a couple of years, a top Pentagon official has said, noting that such a move would not be "prudent".
India has said it was "deeply worried" over the potential nexus between clandestine proliferation of nuclear weapons and terrorism and favoured "transparent verification procedures" to prevent such materials falling in dangerous hands.
Pakistan on Sunday junked as "rubbish" a report that elite US troops were ready to counter any move to hijack the country's nuclear arsenal and said it was "a figment of the imagination".
The Strategic Forces Command responsible for the nuclear arsenal of the country will be headed by Air Marshal KJ Mathews, who will take over from Lieutenant General Balraj Singh.
The Obama administration has said that North Korea should give up its ambition of becoming a nuclear power before returning to the denuclearisation talks.
The five United States origin terror suspects, who were arrested from Sargodha earlier this month, were planning to attack the Chasma nuclear power plant and other strategic establishments in the country, a private television channel has reported.The Daily Times reported Sargodha Cantonment Station House Officer, Amir Sherazi, as saying that the suspects had disclosed their plans during interrogations.Earlier, a local Pakistani court extended the custody of terror suspects.
Two employees of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission were injured when the vehicle they were traveling in was targeted with a roadside bomb in the country's troubled northwestern region on Tuesday. The blast occurred in Lakki Marwat district of the North West Frontier Province, officials were quoted as saying by the Geo News channel. A technician and the vehicle's driver were injured in the attack, they said. Both men sustained minor injuries.
A top radiation biologist claimed that the peerless power of Trifala -- a combination of three herbs, Amalaki, Haritaki and Bibhitaki -- held the promise of protecting the body from the attack of dreadful diseases.
India and Russia will take new steps to reinvent their strategic partnership when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin on December 7, with a civil nuclear cooperation agreement and an extended defence cooperation pact, expected to be the highlight of the meeting.
"This administration will work toward a world without nuclear weapons and we will continue to maintain a safe, secure, and effective deterrent as we proceed toward that goal," Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, said.
Journalist Joshua Pollack has written a startling article for Playboy magazine, in which he reveals that Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who fell from grace after it was found that he sold nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran, may have also sold the technology to his country's greatest foe: India. Until now, the 'fourth customer' mystery has baffled investigators.
Chief of Army staff General Deepak Kapoor on Sunday said it was important to ensure that the control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons command does not go to "wrong hands".
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has transferred control of nuclear weapons to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Describing the nuclear deal as a "landmark" in Indo-US relations, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said the two countries are finalising details to make the pact fully operational, a step that will remove restriction on the flow of nuclear technology and open a large area of commercial opportunity for American businesses.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M Karunanidhi has said that all viewpoints have to be taken into account before starting any work on the disputed Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. "I have already mentioned that an all-party meeting must be convened to discuss the issue. But it was not done and instead an assembly session was called. By convening an all-party meeting, we get different views on the subject and that is what we have missed, I feel," added Karunanidhi.
It is not clear, however, if Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who ended his visit to India on Friday, bit the bullet and told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would work on his Labour Party back home and convince them to slowly withdraw its ban on the sale of uranium to India.
Indicating a greater role of the private sector in the field of nuclear energy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there was a need to tap additional sources of investments for the ambitious expansion programme.
The power of the blast has not been officially confirmed, but the state-run Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources said it was small, equivalent to around 550 tons of TNT explosives.
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