Rory Medcalf, writing on the Lowy Interpreter, suggests that Manmohan Singh’s omission on India’s test moratorium “won’t lead to fission”:
For a start, while it might seem odd that Singh did not mention the testing moratorium on that occasion, the M-word still features regularly in Indian Government discourse. Just yesterday, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee used it while discussing the nuclear aspects of his recent talks with the Australian Government. And at least as telling as the content of Singh’s 9 June speech was the way his Government marked the tenth anniversary of India’s May 1998 nuclear tests — it didn’t.
I have a sense that there is a quiet and growing recognition in New Delhi that India has been needlessly backing itself into a diplomatic corner on the question of whether and when it would sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and that there is a wish, given the new global momentum on disarmament and the controversy over the US-India nuclear deal, to slip quietly out of that corner. So while I am surprised Singh did not mention testing in his recent speech, I wouldn’t read so much into it. The bottom line is that if the US finally ratifies the CTBT — a real possibility in the post-Bush era — then China will follow quickly, and India not long after.
I hope that’s right.