New Delhi, Dec 15: The government will embark on its much-awaited exercise to build consensus on signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), when Prime Minister A B Vajpayee meets Congress president Sonia Gandhi and aides on Friday.The Congress has already indicated, internally as well as to its visitors from abroad the latest being British deputy prime minister John Prescott that it is not averse to signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but ``needs to be reassured'' on a number of counts before it could give its final consent to signing on the document.Significantly, Congress and other party leaders are now saying that they intend to ask the government whether the nine rounds of talks between external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and American deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott have led to at least an implicit ``acceptance of India as a nuclear weapons power''.It could be the one trick question at the Friday meeting. The answer may not only reveal key clues to theJaswant-Talbott talks, but also indicate the direction of the government's current thinking. Is India, for example, looking for a ``grand bargain'' such as implicit acceptance of nuclear power status in exchange for a signature on the CTBT line? Or is the country willing to settle for other considerations, such as the removal of multilateral sanctions on loans?Opposition sources, who say they are appreciative of the prime minister's exercise to build a ``national consensus'' on this issue, nevertheless point out that they intend ``getting some answers'' on other questions as well before they could agree to it.Are the nation's scientists satisfied, for example, with the data they have received from the five tests conducted in May last year? Or do they feel there is a need to conduct any more tests in the future? Significantly, the Congress which has recently conducted its own ``update'' on the 1989 Rajiv Gandhi action plan for disarmament ``to fit in with the current situation,'' may well ask Vajpayeeto link a CTBT signature with a pledge that it will continue to strive for time-bound elimination of nuclear weapons.The next few weeks are bound to be critical as the government firms up a national view on signature, before the tenth ``strategic dialogue'' round between Jaswant Singh and Talbott takes place sometime in January, in London. As the CTBT debate picks up tempo, security analysts are arguing that the decision to sign on the dotted line must be predicated on the benefits India will get from such a signature.The rub may not only lie in the difference between what India may want and what the Western nuclear powers are willing to part with. Even within India, different sets of nuclear experts have their own views on what New Delhi could demand as a quid pro quo for signature.
