World - India - US working on new draft text for NSG waiver

NEW DELHI: As India and the US work on a new draft text for an NSG waiver, some compromise solutions to the most sticky issues have been proposed but India has not accepted all of them yet. The new text, which is expected to be circulated later this week, is likely to modify the language of the draft to keep NSG member countries' concerns in perspective, but within India's red lines.

That's not easy given the fact that India's room for flexibility is virtually nil. The draft is currently being negotiated between the US and India in Washington, where foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is working on the language with his counterpart, William Burns, and Richard Stratford. There are three main conditions that have become the "core" — a "testing" clause, bar on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology and a periodic review of India's compliance.

The easiest to resolve will be the "review" demand — India opposes something that is intrusive or discriminatory, so the way out appears to be something like this. India would engage in a kind of "chair dialogue" or a periodic consultation with the NSG that would not be intrusive. Instead, it would be a mechanism that could enhance India's relations with the global nuclear body. On the issue of "testing", or whether NSG will cease cooperation if India tests another nuclear weapon, the proposal gaining currency is a replication of the 123 agreement — that in such an event there would be a set of "consultations" between the NSG members where the decision on future course of action would be taken in NSG tradition, by consensus.

The problem compromise is on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology (ENR) to India. India is adamant that this should not be barred to India. But many countries are insisting on barring this to India. The infamous Hyde Act actually allows transfer of ENR technology to India under certain conditions — in a multinational facility, under a bilateral agreement or if the US president certifies that the enriched fuel would only be used for civilian purposes.

The 123 agreement opened the door for separate agreements on reprocessing, and the IAEA also left a door open for a separate agreement on enrichment. The NSG guidelines themselves do not talk about ENR transfers. Over the past few years, NSG countries have been involved in a heated debate about whether to include ENR technology in the guidelines. But there has been no decision yet. In fact, since the NSG has been established, said sources, there has been a tradition of transferring ENR technology only to countries that already have it. But there is a huge resistance to giving it to India, and one of the unstated reasons, said an Indian official, could be "to extend India's external vulnerabilities". India is equally adamant on this.

The compromise that has been offered to India is that the NSG would defer decision on India's demand until it decides on its own guidelines. India would reject this outright, say sources, because accepting any bar on ENR would mean the choking off of India's nuclear industry — it means India would import reactors but cannot enrich fuel to feed it or reprocess to clean up.
NSG officials said they were wading through some 50 amendments that have been tabled, and none of them have been removed yet. This means the opposition has not dried up yet, they said. Some of the amendments are clearly for domestic audiences, and certainly there is no question of putting NPT and CTBT demands on the table, they said. However, the US is already working on the next step of the nuclear deal. Talking to journalists en route to Israel on Tuesday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said, "Our principal focus right now has been on the India civil nuclear deal, working through the NSG — or having worked through the IAEA, now working through the NSG, and still trying to get into a position to make the appropriate presidential determinations in early September."