Sunday, March 12 2006 14:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Britain has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the United States, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a media report claimed here today(Mar 12,2006).

The Government has been pushing ahead with the programme while claiming that no decision has been made on a successor to Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent, 'The Sunday Times'reported.

Work on a new weapon by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire has been under way since Tony Blair was re-elected as Prime Minister last May, and is now said to be ahead of a similar US research, the report claimed.

The aim, according to the report, is to produce a simpler device using proven components to avoid breaching the ban on nuclear testing. Known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), it is being designed so that it can be tested in a laboratory rather than by detonation, the paper said.

"We've got to build something that we can never test and be absolutely confident that, when we use it, it will work," one senior British source told the newspaper.

The secret programme to build a new warhead in close cooperation with the Americans will spark anger among Labour opponents of any replacement of the Trident programme, which is estimated to have cost about 10 billion pounds.

Developing a new weapon would also be a material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The office of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, refused to comment on whether it had been asked for legal advice by the 10 Downing Street.