India Friday said it is committed to unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing but will not get into a legal commitment barring it from carrying out further testing.
"We are not in a position to deviate from the July 18 joint statement," Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who held talks with US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns on implementation of the Indo-US nuclear deal, said.
Asked about the controversy over the clause brought by Washington in the initial draft that the US would end cooperation with India if it were to test, he recalled that New Delhi has already publicly said that it would not accept any such clause.
Coverage: The Indo-US nuclear tango
On whether he had made it clear to Burns that India would not accept any such change in July 18 agreement, he said "it remains our position that such clause has no place in the bilateral agreement, precisely because it would change what is a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, a commitment which has been made by India, into a legal commitment. So we have pointed this out to the American side.
"But at the same time we have conveyed quite categorically that we are committed to the unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing."
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