WASHINGTON: India on Monday warned it would oppose the UN treaty banning nuclear tests, calling it disciminatory, despite President Barack Obama's hopes that the United States will ratify it.Shyam Saran, India's special envoy on nuclear issues, conceded on a visit to Washington that the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) could prove to be a "contentious" issue with the new US administration.The CTBT would ban all nuclear explosions for any purpose. It cannot come into effect as nuclear powers such as the United States and China have not ratified it or, in the case of India and rival Pakistan, even signed it.Saran said India opposed the CTBT because it "was not explicitly linked to the goal of nuclear disarmament.""For India, this was crucial since it was not acceptable to legitimize, in any way, a permanent division between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states," he said at the Brookings Institution.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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