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NSG begins talks on India waiver

Siddharth Varadarajan

Naysayers may delay decision

Vienna: The Nuclear Suppliers Group began formal deliberations here Thursday on whether to grant India a waiver from its export guidelines amidst growing speculation that internal differences within the cartel could lead to the deferment of any actual decision to a second sitting two weeks from now.

The group began its meeting in the morning with opening statements from a number of countries and adjourned to attend a brief presentation by Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon. But in the afternoon, the debate over whether to approve the waiver or not began in right earnest.

Shortly after the NSG’s German chair called the special plenary to order in the morning and invited opening comments on the American proposal that had already been circulated to members, a number of delegates raised their flags.

First off the bat was the United States. According to an account provided to The Hindu by a participant from a former Eastern Bloc country, the U.S. urged the adoption of the waiver as it stood “in a nice but not so forceful way.” The diplomat divided NSG members into three groups based on their opening interventions. Those who unambiguously backed adoption of the text included the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine as well as Canada. A second group of “like-minded countries” said they wished to be “constructive” but wanted some additions and conditions included in the text. Among these were Austria, Ireland and New Zealand. Switzerland too expressed concerns, he said. The third group consisted of those who came out in favour of the proposal but who did not appear overly enthusiastic. This group, according to the diplomat, included Germany and Japan, as well as Australia.

Other diplomats described Thursday’s deliberations as “positive” and “constructive” but said it was too early to judge whether the NSG would be able to reach a consensus on the waiver by the end of Friday evening. “There is nothing new that is being said. Every country’s position is well known. But the question is whether we can take a decision either way by tomorrow,” a diplomat who did not want her country to be identified told The Hindu. “If not, perhaps another meeting may be necessary.”

According to these diplomatic sources, most countries which raised objections in the morning preferred not to go into specific aspects of the waiver, limiting their interventions to lamenting the implications of the India exemption for the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the non-proliferation regime in general. Some delegations noted that an earlier reference to the desirability of India eventually accepting international safeguards over all its nuclear facilities — equivalent to New Delhi giving up the bomb and signing the NPT — had now been dropped.

Indeed, NPT, full-scope safeguards and non-proliferation concerns figured prominently in an informal briefing Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon held for NSG members at the U.N. complex on Wednesday night. Both Austria and New Zealand attended that briefing and asked questions, diplomats said.

Indian officials say the raising of general non-proliferation objections by several countries may contain a silver lining because it shifts the terrain of discussion away from technical and legal nit-picking towards more “political considerations.”

One NSG country diplomat said most delegations concede that the bulk of their specific concerns have already been addressed by the Indian non-proliferation commitments listed in the draft waiver. “What some countries are looking for is for tighter language tying the NSG’s waiver to those commitments.”

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