For four years, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, has lived in the shadows, confined to his Islamabad home since a tearful televised confession in which he admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. On Thursday, the 76-year-old scientist returned to the spotlight with a bold new twist: that he had not meant a word of his earlier admission.
IN what could further dampen the spirits of the nuclear deal enthusiasts, the government has put off the meeting of the Left-UPA panel on the Indo-US nuclear agreement to June 18. This is the second shocker for the pro-deal quarters in the past two days. Their hopes about the government going ahead with the deal were revived when the media came out reports about the prime minister planning a meeting of senior officials involved with the nuclear agreement. Government leaders have already denied any plans for such an exercise.
The Left Front has suffered a big jolt in panchayat elections in West Bengal. CPM's defeat in Nandigram and Singur at the hands of Trinamool Congress has proved that the people will not tolerate oppressive policies. Trinamool Congress has won all the four seats of district council of Nandigram. The party has also occupied the three seats of Singur in Hoogli district. Earlier, these seats were under CPM. Nandigram comes under Madinipur district. Though CPM had spent a lot of money in campaigning and used all the methods to win the election but all went in vain.
As the energy demand in the country was growing by leaps and bounds, the India-United States nuclear deal was important to meet the nation's energy needs and get access to uranium from abroad, Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh told journalists on the sidelines of a NTPC function here on Monday. Mr. Ramesh said the country faced severe uranium shortage and its nuclear plants were running at only 50 per cent capacity. To get access to uranium reserves and sources around the world, it was important that the deal materialised.
It's the 10th anniversary of the nuclear tests in Pokhran in 1998 that forever changed the way India and the rest of the world perceived each other. But the date has been marked only by newspapers and magazines who love anniversaries. It's not on the official anniversary agenda of the UPA government.
Former president A P J Abdul Kalam was on Sunday all praise for the "courage' shown by then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee in deciding to go for Pokhran tests within weeks of assuming office in March 1998. "Vajpayee gave us the permission within a week of assuming the political office, to establish India's expertise,' Kalam said at a function at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the
