WASHINGTON, April 20: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that New Delhi would never put all its nuclear reactors under full-scope international safeguards, as demanded by some lawmakers in the United States.

“Given the circumstances, we need a strategic nuclear weapons programme,” he told Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland in New Delhi. The conversation, published on Thursday, quotes Mr Singh as saying that the congressional approval of a nuclear deal with the US would lead “to a more productive, more durable relationship” between New Delhi and Washington.

The US Congress is considering a bill that proposes changes to America’s non-proliferation laws for allowing India to acquire civil nuclear technology from Washington.