Nations anxious to safeguard the fragile Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will seek conditions for lifting a 34-year embargo on nuclear trade with India at the United States' behest, diplomats and analysts say. They agree India should not expect a free pass to world markets in nuclear fuel and technology for civilian use as part of a deal with Washington because it has not signed the NPT or ruled out further testing of atomic bombs. But India's governing coalition, with a shaky majority in parliament, has scant room for compromise on conditions. A written-in ban on future nuclear tests, for example, would be almost impossible politically for New Delhi to accept. The 45 nations in the Nuclear Suppliers Group will meet Aug. 21-22 to consider a US draft for a waiver allowing trade with India as an NPT outsider. An NSG green light would send the US-India deal to the US Congress for final ratification. Stalled by Indian political disarray until last month, the 2005 deal vaulted a big hurdle on Aug. 1 when India won U.N. nuclear watchdog approval for a plan subjecting its designated civilian nuclear reactors to regular inspections. Qualms about advancing the deal bowed to a consensus that putting 14 of India's 22 reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring would be good for non-proliferation. But inspections will be contingent on “continuous” nuclear supply from abroad, and some on the IAEA's 35-nation governing board, 19 of whom are also in the NSG, left little doubt that a trade waiver would not come so easily, and not without a price. “The NSG's decision will have huge import for the future of non-proliferation,” said Sharon Squassoni, senior arms control analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New Delhi, fending off opposition charges the deal will make traditionally non-aligned India a strategic vassal of the United States, notes the deal does not touch its nuclear arms sector and says it anticipates a “clean, unconditional” NSG exemption. “The Indians are misreading the NSG membership if they think they are going to get that. It is not going to happen,” said a European diplomat, echoing others ahead of the NSG gathering. Changing NSG policy requires approval by consensus only. A decision by the group, created after New Delhi's 1974 nuclear test, is not foreseen before a second meeting in September. Conditions that may be proposed for India to do business with the nuclear cartel, diplomats said, could include periodic review of the waiver and wider-ranging, short-notice inspections beyond the limited regime agreed with the IAEA. Crucially, any nuclear test should halt trade, many suggest. NPT integrity at stake NSG members want to ensure that no items India imports for its civilian nuclear power industry could be quietly siphoned into its atomic bomb program, beyond IAEA safeguards. “Many countries would find it hard to supply a civilian program in a state that also has nuclear arms without stronger barriers to leakage between sectors,” said another diplomat. More broadly, they aim to minimize concern that rewarding a state which developed nuclear arms in the 1970s with Canadian reactor technology obtained ostensibly for civilian uses will destroy respect for the 40-year-old NPT. The Bush administration and major allies say the deal will nudge the world's largest democracy towards the NPT mainstream and combat global warming by fostering use of low-polluting nuclear energy in burgeoning developing economies. Arms control groups accuse nuclear powers favoring the deal of being keener to reap its prospective hefty commercial and political benefits than preserve non-proliferation principles. Critics fear the deal could spur the only other non-NPT states, Pakistan and Israel, both with nuclear firepower and a history of regional conflict, to press for similar concessions. Further, they say, it sends a “double standards” message to Iran, an NPT state with a nuclear program under U.N. sanctions due to suspicions, but no hard evidence, it is after atom bombs. Analysts divide NSG sentiment into 15-20 likely backers - close US allies and Russia; a similar number of potential backers like China, Germany and Japan; and the rest champions of disarmament like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and New Zealand who would propose conditions that others could go along with. India has observed a voluntary test moratorium since 1998 and begun talks with the IAEA on intrusive inspections. But some US lawmakers have big reservations about the deal unless it complies with the Hyde Act that stipulates trade with India must be frozen if it tests another atom bomb. The 2006 act also requires permanent, unconditional inspections in India. If the waiver does not spell out such minimum conditions, the Bush administration should not bother seeking NSG approval before it leaves office in January, a powerful congressional leader wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week. The deal faces indefinite limbo if not ratified by the end of September, when Congress adjourns for November elections. – Reuters Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton in New Delhi. __
