NSG Discusses Indian Nuclear Trade Exemption

Nuclear exporting nations began talks in Vienna today to consider allowing nuclear sales to India, more than 30 years after New Delhi was cut off from commercial markets because of its 1974 nuclear test, the Press Trust of India reported (see GSN, Aug. 20).

Indian officials briefed the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group on the nation’s plans to purchase nuclear technology while opening its civilian nuclear sector to international monitoring. 

The session was scheduled to continue tomorrow and could require additional meetings next month.

The formal review of India’s trade status was spurred by a tentative U.S.-Indian nuclear trade deal reached in 2005.  Since then, the United States has exempted New Delhi from nuclear nonproliferation laws that mirrored the current NSG prohibitions.  Those guidelines bar key nuclear sales to nations that have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and do not permit international oversight of all their nuclear activities.

Indian and U.S. officials have argued, however, that India has been a responsible nation that has not proliferated nuclear technology and therefore deserves different treatment than other nuclear-armed nations outside the NPT regime.

The suppliers group makes it decisions by consensus, and a small number of members expressed reservations today about waiving the rules for India, PTI reported (Lalitha Vaidyanathan, Press Trust of India, Aug. 21).

Potential deal blockers include Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, Agence France-Presse reported today.  U.S. officials, however, expressed hope that their concerns could be resolved and the trade deal advanced in time for lawmakers in Washington to grant final approval this year (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Aug. 21).

A group critical of the planned Indian nuclear deal sent a letter to NSG chair Germany last week urging the group to at least add some key conditions if it chose to exempt India from the guidelines.

The letter, crafted by the Arms Control Association and signed by 150 nonproliferation experts, urges the group to agree to cut off nuclear trade if India resumes nuclear testing and to never sell any nuclear fuel production equipment, technology that could also be used to produce nuclear-weapon materials.

Those and other suggestions would ease the sting of what is still a bad deal, the letter says.

“India’s commitments under the current terms of the proposed arrangement do not justify making far-reaching exceptions to international nonproliferation rules and norms,” the letter says (Arms Control Association release, Aug. 15).

Two U.S. lawmakers also urged NSG members to adopt similar conditions while reminding the group of its origins.

“Paradoxically, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was formed in direct response to India’s illegal 1974 nuclear test.  Its central purpose is to ensure that no other country exploits foreign nuclear energy assistance to make a bomb, as India did,” said Representatives Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) in a New York Times commentary yesterday.

The two recommended that NSG nations require India to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and to end the production of nuclear-weapon materials before allowing New Delhi to purchase any nuclear technology (Markey/Tauscher, New York Times, Aug. 20).

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