Bush sowed seeds of destruction in India

It's appalling that President Bush has signed a nuclear pact with India (March 3). Congress must step in and stop this madness.

It's blatant hypocrisy to tell Iran and North Korea that they cannot develop nuclear weapons when we have thousands, some on trigger alert, and we encourage India, which came perilously close to a nuclear confrontation with Pakistan, to develop more. This can only lead to a disastrous nuclear arms race. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty states that the nonnuclear states will not develop nuclear weapons if they are never threatened with them and if the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China begin to dismantle theirs. None of those countries has honored that treaty, and now Israel, India, Pakistan and possibly Iran and North Korea have joined the nuclear club.

These weapons could well destroy the Earth and its people. They must never be used, and they must gradually be eliminated.

ANN EDELMAN

\o7Los Angeles

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\f7In India on Thursday, Bush called nuclear power a "renewable source of energy." This administration has always been good at convincing people that things are what they aren't, but this is getting ridiculous. Are they now going to try to change nuclear energy into something as benevolent as solar, wind and biomass?

Nuclear energy is not "renewable," nor has it ever been. Even the Department of Energy doesn't categorize nuclear energy as renewable. The only thing even remotely renewable about nuclear fuel is that once you use it, it never goes away.

MIKE CASEY

\o7Fallbrook, Calif.

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