The Bush Administration may have recognised India "as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology", the NDA chairman said, "but it is far from recognising India as a legitimate and responsible nuclear weapons state".

Pointing out the contrast between the UPA Government's tangible commitments and the Bush Administration's intangible promises, Mr Vajpayee said in a statement, "It is difficult to resist the feeling that while India has made long-term and specific commitments in the joint statement, the US has merely made promises which it may not be able to see through either in the US Congress or with its friends in the exclusive nuclear club."

Describing Mr Singh's "offer to identify and separate India's civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes" as having "long-term national security implications", Mr Vajpayee said that the joint statement has "caused concern, even consternation, among India's nuclear scientists. The Bharatiya Janata Party shares these concerns and fears".

Mr Vajpayee, whose NDA Government conducted the Pokhran II nuclear tests in May 1998, said, "The military programmes are a small fraction of our nuclear facilities. We believe that separating the civilian from the military would be very difficult, if not impossible. The costs involved will also be prohibitive."

Most important, the segregation of facilities, according to Mr Vajpayee, will deny India any flexibility in determining the size of its nuclear deterrent. "Though we believe in minimum credible deterrent, the size of our deterrent must be determined from time to time on the basis of the nation's threat perception," he said, asserting, "This is a judgement that cannot be surrendered to anyone else."

What will also inhibit India's military nuclear programme, Mr Vajpayee said, is the implicit acceptance of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty "even before such an international treaty has been fully negotiated and put into force by other nuclear weapon states".

Castigating the UPA Government for "offering to sign and adhere to an Additional Protocol with respect to civilian nuclear facilities", Mr Vajpayee said this "is fraught with dangers". The Additional Protocol "will, by its very nature, be more intrusive", he added, "since India will have to allow international inspectors free access to our nuclear facilities anywhere anytime".

Mr Vajpayee is of the view that as a result of the UPA Government's undertaking as contained in the Washington joint statement, Indian scientists will lose their freedom.

"Indian nuclear scientists have been allowed all these years to carry out research activities without anyone breathing down their necks," he pointed out, but "under the new arrangement this will change and put restrictions even on our research programmes".

He has highlighted the very real possibility of erosion of India's potential self-reliance in nuclear fuel. "The thorium research programme," he said, "can give us freedom from nuclear fuel imports and make us self-reliant in nuclear fuel. What happens to that programme?" The UPA Government owes an explanation on this count, Mr Vajpayee said.

According to him, the US could have been "more forthright" on issues like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and the Generation IV International Forum, but it chose not to be.