Friday, November 4 2005 13:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Beijing: Risking the hard-won forward movement in India-China relations, the Chinese official media has attacked the Indo-US nuclear energy cooperation agreement insisting that the bilateral deal will inflict a 'hard blow' to global non-proliferation regime and trigger a domino effect.

"This would be a hard blow on America's leading role in the global proliferation prevention system as well as the system itself," sources said. Being the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party of China it accused Bush Administration for being soft on India and undercutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

"This will bring about a series of negative impacts", sources said.

"Now that the United States buys another country in with nuclear technologies in defiance of international treaty, other nuclear suppliers also have their own partners of interest as well as good reasons to copy what the United States did," it said.

"A domino effect of nuclear proliferation, once turned into reality, will definitely lead to global nuclear proliferation and competition," sources warned.

"Always calling itself a 'guard' for nuclear proliferation prevention, the US often condemns other countries for irresponsible transfers but this time, it hesitates not a bit in revising laws, taking the lead in 'making an exception' (in the case of India), the source noted.