VIENNA: The United States has told six nations its bid to lift a global ban on nuclear trade with India has stumbled over their objections and pressed them at a New Delhi meeting to relent, diplomats said yesterday.
Members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group have balked at approving a waiver to its rules allowing business with India without conditions to help finalize Washington’s 2005 civilian nuclear cooperation deal with New Delhi.
An Aug. 21-22 NSG meeting dissolved inconclusively after up to 20 member states called for changes to the US waiver draft to ensure Indian access to foreign nuclear markets would not indirectly benefit its atomic bomb program.
The US-India deal has dismayed pro-disarmament nations and campaigners since India is outside the global Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed nuclear bombs in the 1970s with Western technology imported ostensibly for peaceful atomic energy.
Washington had been expected to rework the waiver draft in consultation with New Delhi for consideration at a second NSG meeting set for Sept. 4-5 in Vienna. Indian officials said they were hoping to get a clean waiver in the next meeting. “We have made it quite clear that we are interested in clean waiver from the NSG,” Pranab Mukherjee, India’s foreign minister told reporters in New Delhi. “We have presented our case. We have made our position clear to interlocutors.”
Some analysts see India’s statement as a change of language from its earlier demand for an “unconditional” waiver.
Washington was shocked and India felt betrayed by the unproductive NSG meeting 10 days ago, US Ambassador David Mulford told envoys from New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands, the diplomats said.
As a result, Mulford said negotiations with India on proposed amendments to the draft were in serious difficulty and the whole effort could break down, the diplomats told Reuters.
Mulford was quoted as saying “nonproliferation bureaucrats” in Vienna seemed out of touch with political leadership and if they were going to insist on “the gold standard of nonproliferation,” there would be no waiver agreement. India rejects any change that would end its right to test nuclear arms even though US legislation itself mandates a halt to trade with India in the event of another test.
