The United States said on Thursday 45 nuclear supplier nations were making headway toward agreement on lifting a ban on trade with India after Washington revised a draft for the move to ease proliferation fears. US officials, racing to finalise a US-Indian atomic energy deal, have been lobbying others in the Nuclear Suppliers Group for a one-time waiver to its rules against doing business with states outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Barring NSG action in early September, the US Congress may run out of time to ratify the deal before it adjourns at the end of the month for elections, leaving the matter to an uncertain fate under a new president. Ahead of a two-day NSG meeting that began on Thursday, some members said changes made to the US waiver draft were cosmetic and did not allay concerns the deal could subvert treaties meant to stop the production or testing of nuclear weapons. In a sign of its desire to save a major Bush administration initiative, Washington sent its No. 3 diplomat, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, to Vienna to head the US delegation at the nuclear cartel gathering. “We are making steady progress in this process and will continue to make progress,” he said outside the closed meeting. “And while a number of representatives here have raised important questions that need to be addressed, our discussions have been constructive and clearly aimed at reaching an early consensus,” Burns told reporters. He took no questions. With the outcome still unclear and likely to require consultations in capitals for a final decision, diplomats said another meeting might have to be held later this month. Washington and some allies assert the US-India deal will move the world's largest democracy towards the non-proliferation mainstream and fight global warming by furthering the use of low-polluting nuclear energy in large developing economies. NSG critics fear India could use access to nuclear material markets to indirectly boost its bomb programme and drive nuclear rival and fellow NPT outsider Pakistan into another arms race. To forestall this, they demanded clauses specifying no trade in the event of another nuclear test explosion, no transfers of fuel-enrichment technology that could be replicated for bomb-making, and periodic reviews of the waiver. Some diplomats said resistance to the US proposal had been markedly reduced by U.S insertions into the latest waiver text making clearer, though not saying outright, that trade with India would be cut off if it tested another nuclear weapon. Two diplomats in the meeting said the unity of six nations that had spearheaded demands for explicit terms on India trade was cracking and other major nations that had voiced some reservations, such as Japan and Canada, had now dropped them. But another diplomat said the “like-minded” bloc of Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands was holding together with quiet Chinese backing and felt Washington's amendments were still not good enough. “The key may lie in building a little more explicitness into the waiver to satisfy the skeptics while keeping in mind India's narrow political room for maneuver. I'm not sure we can crack that nut by Friday,” said a diplomat from a large NSG state. India has ruled out conditions on an NSG exemption, such as a clear test ban, to protect its strategic nuclear sovereignty. But its ruling coalition remains vulnerable to opposition complaints about a “sellout” of its strategic autonomy in the US deal. It drew renewed fire on Thursday over a leak of secret Bush administration testimony assuring Congress that another Indian test would immediately terminate trade. The government said India stood by its unilateral test moratorium but it would keep a right to test should it want to.
