Consensus on a clean waiver for India continues to be elusive in Vienna as the Nuclear Suppliers Group began discussions on Thursday.
Want more changes before giving India the waiver
NEW DELHI: Consensus on a clean waiver for India continues to be elusive in Vienna as the Nuclear Suppliers Group began discussions on Thursday.
Countries with concerns on non-proliferation are not satisfied with the wording of the new draft. The draft was aimed at reassuring the nay sayers in the 45-member cartel, which regulates the global nuclear trade.
The latest from Vienna is that many countries are demanding changes in the draft. A long lunch break was announced to allow the changes in the document, which is acceptable to both India and countries like New Zealand, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Norway and a few others with strong non-proliferation domestic lobbies.
“I believe that we’re making steady progress in this process and that we’ll continue to make progress,” US under secretary of state for political affairs, William Burns, told reporters in Vienna on Thursday.
“While a number of representatives here have raised important questions that need to be addressed, our discussions have been constructive and clearly aimed at reaching an early consensus,” Burns added. He was referring to the backroom negotiations which are now on to much needed changes in the draft.
“The United States believes firmly that the step that we’re considering for India will strengthen non-proliferation and helps to welcome one of the world’s largest economies and the world’s largest democracy more fully into the global fold,” Burns said.
Washington is selling the Indo-US nuclear deal as a major step forward for the international non-proliferation regime.
But opposition remains firm, with many countries refusing to buy this argument. Besides the six known opponents, there are several others who are speaking out against an unconditional exemption for India.
The fact that New Delhi has a nuclear weapons programme, and has refused to sign either the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is regarded by these countries as blatantly unfair. While they are not against allowing nuclear trade, they want certain conditions to be attached to the waiver. India has been firmly resisting this.
But realising the kind of opposition that the draft is against, New Delhi will have to be more accommodating if it wants the exemption to be cleared by Friday. Conscious of the domestic opposition, the Manmohan Singh government can also not agree to anything which goes beyond what he has said in parliament.
External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee made it clear in an interview to AIR that the NSG waiver, which goes beyond Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s promise to parliament is not acceptable. “We have already stated what is our commitment. We cannot go beyond our commitment to parliament, commitment made by the prime minister and commitment made by ourselves, to parliament,” he said.
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