US seeks way out of India nuclear deal impasse

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 programme.

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 next to the UN nuclear watchdog agency headquarters.

But diplomats, asking for anonymity due to political sensitivities, said the redrafting had run into Indian challenges and the US envoy to New Delhi protested to the leading six NSG hardliners at a meeting on Thursday.

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, according to the diplomats.

As a result, Mulford said negotiations with India on proposed amendments to the draft were in serious difficulty and the whole effort was in danger of breakdown, the diplomats said.

8216;NON-PROLIFERATION BUREAUCRATS8217;

He was quoted as saying 8216;non-proliferation bureaucrats8217; in Vienna seemed out of touch with political leadership and if they were going to insist on 8216;the gold standard of non-proliferation8217;, there would be no waiver agreement.

Mulford, diplomats said, urged the six to 8216;make a strategic and political choice8217; that may not be perfect in NPT terms but was the best achievable, given the shaky Indian governing coalition8217;s political inability to accept major NSG conditions.

India has insisted on a 8216;clean, unconditional8217; NSG waiver. Above all, it 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 that event of another test.

Washington and some allies assert the deal will shift India, the world8217;s largest democracy, towards the non-proliferation mainstream and combat global warming by fostering use of low-polluting nuclear energy in developing economies.

8220;While there is still a distance to go, the proposal to give India a clean exemption from global nuclear trade standards is in deep trouble,8221; Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association think tank in Washington wrote in a commentary on Thursday.

Some diplomats said that if a revised US draft was not circulated by Friday, there might not be enough time to scrutinise it and finalise positions for a Sept 4-5 meeting.

Barring an NSG decision in early September, the US Congress may run out of time for final ratification of the U.S.-India deal before it adjourns at the end of the month for autumn elections. That would leave the deal in indefinite limbo.

8220;All the talk about shock, betrayal, surprise has an element of the histrionic. These issues have been on the NSG agenda for two years,8221; said one senior NSG diplomat.

8220;The US was quite inactive in lobbying countries with known concerns about the deal before the Aug 21-22 meeting,8221; another diplomat said.

8220;Their failure to lobby actively may well have been because they were hoping to use other countries to do their dirty work, and insert conditions they were not in a position to insert themselves because they feared the likely reaction from India.8221;