WASHINGTON, June 17: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has asserted that India was now a nuclear weapons state with a "credible deterrent" and warned that United States stood to lose if sanctions against India continued.In an interview to Washington Post published today, Vajpayee also said that India did not propose to engage in an arms race and hence did not need to replicate the elaborate command and control systems of other nuclear powers to manage these weapons.He emphasised that one of the aims of Indian nuclear tests was to prod other nuclear powers to agree to total nuclear disarmament. He said US-Russian strategic arms reduction agreements - those carried out and those in the works - were not viewed by India as complete nuclear disarmament. He warned that not only India but the US also stood to bear the brunt of sanctions.
