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Indian ambassador visits Hiroshima, denies possibility of diverting nuclear power to nuclear weapons

by Kyoko Niiyama, Staff Writer

On August 21, Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa, the Indian ambassador to Japan, visited Hiroshima for the first time. Referring to the Japan-India Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, an accord that India and Japan are currently negotiating, she denied the possibility that nuclear energy could be diverted to building nuclear arms, saying that the agreement had no relevance to nuclear weapons and that her nation, which lacks energy resources, needed this agreement to shore up its capacity to generate nuclear power.

India, which has not joined the the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), holds nuclear weapons. Commenting on the fact that India is not a member of the NPT, Ms. Wadhwa said that India has appealed for denuclearization on a global scale and both the Indian government and the Indian people recognize the horror of nuclear arms.

Ms. Wadhwa toured Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in the city center. Guided by Kenji Shiga, director of the museum, she gazed closely at a panoramic model which shows the damage wrought by the atomic bombing, among other displays. She said that innocent children must never again fall victim to nuclear weapons. On August 22, she will meet with Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui.

(Originally published on August 22, 2013)

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