Manmohan Singh at the conference on Monday. (Reuters)

New Delhi, June 9: The Prime Minister today appeared to make a veiled pitch for the Indo-US nuclear deal, not mentioning it by name but stressing that India needed nuclear energy.

“Our energy needs will continue to rise in the foreseeable future. We do not have the luxury of limiting our options of energy sources,” Manmohan Singh said after inaugurating a two-day seminar here on “Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons”.

“We therefore wish to create an international environment in which nuclear technology is used not for destructive purposes but for helping us meet our national development goals and our energy security.”

The government has been arguing that the Indo-US deal would help the country’s energy basket and pave the way for co-operation with the international community, ending India’s 34-year-old nuclear isolation.

In keeping with the theme of the seminar, Singh warned against the “growing risk” of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists and said all countries must try and ensure that “dangerous hands” were denied atomic material and technology.

“I refer to the growing risk that nuclear weapons may be acquired by terrorists or those driven by extreme ideologies; the increasing danger of non-state actors accessing nuclear materials and devices; the development of new weapon systems based on emerging technologies which pose challenges to space security and provide new roles for nuclear weapons; and the weakening of multi-lateralism even as bilateral arms control processes falter in shifting strategic landscapes,” he said.

Singh stressed that India had “no intention” of engaging in an arms race with anyone, and said Delhi was “fully committed to nuclear disarmament that is global, universal and non-discriminatory in nature”.

“The painful reality is that the goal of global disarmament, based on the principles of universality, non-discrimination and effective compliance, still remains a distant one.”

Singh emphasised that India was aware of its responsibilities as a “nuclear weapon state”, and had a declared doctrine of no-first-use “based on credible minimum deterrence”.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, the panchayati raj minister who had served in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO, remembered the former Prime Minister’s 1988 UN speech on disarmament.

“It was Rajiv Gandhi’s vision, and India still remains committed to it,” Aiyar said.

Singh had earlier said: “Rajiv Gandhi believed that disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament, was essential to usher in a safe and non-violent world. At the heart of the action plan was a commitment to eliminate all nuclear weapons in three stages by 2010.”