Read the following passage carefully to answer these questions. Certain words/phrases are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.

India’s nuclear ambition had been the bone of contention for a very long time. It was a ‘’settled’’ belief in our country that the US began to ‘’stress’’ the issue of signing the CTBT only in more recent round of talks when the two countries had come close to an ‘’agreement’’ on the other issues, including CTBT because it is part of its somewhat browbeating style of doing business. But a moment’s reflection would show that there could be another explanation. In the aftermath of Pokhran-II when tempers had cooled, the US was ‘’predisposed’’ to accept our Prime Minister’s repeated assertions that India intended to arm it with nuclear weapons only as a deterrent to a nuclear attack or blackmail.