NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 25: Former Prime Minister I K Gujral on Saturday assailed the government for maintaining "secrecy" on the progress of talks with the United States and the other nuclear powers on the CTBT issue and not sharing the information in this regard with opposition parties."Unless the progress made during nine rounds of high level talks with the United States, is not known, how can opposition parties form an opinion on the issue?" Gujral said in an interview to a television programme on Doordarshan."We (opposition) also do not know the stand of Russia and China and what discussions are going on with them," the former premier, whose government had refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, said.Besides, it was not clear what would be India's "status" as most of the nuclear powers, including US, had refused to recognise it as a "nuclear state".Gujral claimed "his government had shared every confidential material with the opposition leaders" on the issue.He said TBT was a "complex" issue as it was an extention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and prohibits non-nuclear states from conducting those tests which the nuclear powers had been conducting all these years to achieve the desired results.
