UN chief Ban Ki-moon has appealed to eight countries, including India, to ratify the CTBT to bring the global nuclear test ban into force.

The UN Secretary-General made the appeal after Indonesia became the 157th country to adopt the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Besides India, China, North Korea, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the US are the other nations in a core group of 44 nuclear countries which did not ratify the treaty.

The 44 nations, which must ratify the CTBT to bring it into force, all have nuclear weapons or atomic programmes.

Promising to provide a level playing field to US companies on civilian nuclear deal, visiting foreign secretary Mr Ranjan Mathai has said India is willing to address their specific concerns within the framework of the law passed in this regard by Parliament. “We will provide a level playing field to US companies, and are prepared to address specific concerns of US companies within the framework of that law,” Mr Mathai said in his address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The Obama administration is reportedly using a secret channel of communication to warn Iran that closing the Straits of Hormuz, through which more than a fifth of sea-borne oil passes, is a “red line” that would provoke a response from Washington. Claiming that Iran has always kept the Straits open to international shipping, Iran allowed the USS Abraham Lincoln, on a routine visit, to pass through the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf last week.

‘Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today,’ the report said

Iran is unlikely to move toward building a nuclear weapon this year because it does not yet have the capability to produce enough weapon-grade uranium, a draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security said on Wednesday.

India along with China, North Korea and Israel has low levels of transparency on nuclear materials and security, an independent report has said.
"Four countries have particularly low levels of transparency, specifically Israel, North Korea, India and China, on materials and materials security," said Page Stoutland, vice president for nuclear materials at the Washington-based independent Nuclear Threat Initiative .

The UN atomic agency confirmed on Monday that Iran has started enriching uranium to 20-per cent purity at a new site in a difficult-to-bomb mountain bunker.
VIENNA: The UN atomic agency confirmed on Monday that Iran has started enriching uranium to 20-per cent purity at a new site in a difficult-to-bomb mountain bunker.

"The IAEA can confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent... in the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant," the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said in a statement.

TEHRAN: Iran has begun uranium enrichment at a new underground site well protected from possible airstrikes, a leading hardline newspaper reported on Sunday in another show of defiance against Western pressure to rein in Tehran's nuclear program. Another newspaper quoted Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Ali Ashraf Nouri as saying that Tehran's leadership has decided to order the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic oil route, if the country's petroleum exports are blocked.

Iran has taken steps in recent weeks that bring it closer to launching uranium enrichment deep inside a mountain, diplomatic sources say, a move that would worsen its nuclear confrontation with the West.

Iran has said for months that it is preparing to conduct uranium enrichment at Fordow - a protected site deep underground where it says it wants to make material for a peaceful nuclear reactor - but it has yet to start.

Iranian scientists have produced their first nuclear fuel rod, Iran’s nuclear agency said Sunday, another step despite United Nations sanctions and measures by the United States and others to stop the nation’s atomic work and shut down any possible pathways to weapons production.

Iran has long said it is forced to seek a way to manufacture the fuel rods on its own, since the sanctions ban it from buying them on foreign markets. Nuclear fuel rods are tubes containing pellets of enriched uranium that provide fuel for reactors.

Pakistan and India on Sunday exchanged lists of nuclear installations and facilities, under an agreement to prevent the two nuclear neighbouring countries from attacking each other's nuclear sites.

The two countries also exchanged lists of prisoners in each other's custody, under another accord binding the two sides to provide details of the prisoners in the custody twice a year--on January 1 and July 1.