India rebuffed on nuke sale pact

ATTEMPTS were under way last night to rescue the radical nuclear pact between Delhi and Washington after the key 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group refused to lift a 34-year-old embargo on nuclear trade with India.

The NSG, which controls the export and sale of nuclear technology worldwide, convened for two days to discuss a US draft proposal "on a statement on civil nuclear co-operation with India" but failed to rubberstamp the deal. 

Officials in New Delhi yesterday described the NSG's failure - which saw almost half the cartel's membership raise "objections and concerns" - as "very surprising indeed" and conceded the deal was approaching its "most serious break point to date". 

The US wants a special waiver of NSG rules for India, which refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing Washington and New Delhi to co-operate in the civilian nuclear field. 

It had been expected that with Washington pressuring hesitant members, the NSG would approve the waiver, allowing New Delhi access to nuclear commerce despite its refusal to also sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 

Under NSG rules, all nuclear trade with India is banned. The US argues the new deal would bring India into the NPT fold after 34 years of isolation and help combat global warming by allowing the world's largest democracy to develop low-polluting nuclear energy. 

Critics argue the deal undermines international non-proliferation efforts by providing US nuclear technology to a non-NPT state. 

Objector nations at the NSG's weekend meeting in Vienna demanded comprehensive changes to the terms of the "waiver", insisting that the cartel should block all nuclear commerce with India if it conducts any further nuclear tests. 

New Delhi signalled yesterday it would not accept any new conditions to win approval and said it held serious doubts aboutthe future viability of the agreement. 

US envoys were sent to the capitals of the NSG members that have raised objections - New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands, among others - to try to persuade them to change their stance. 

New Zealand is regarded as a substantial stumbling block in the imbroglio, and reports in New Delhi said that US deputy assistant secretary of state Glen Davies had been sent to Wellington to try to persuade the New Zealand Government to support India. 

Australia is backing India's application within the NSG and is believed in New Delhi to be doing what it can to persuade Wellington to do so as well. 

The problems within the NSG were unexpected, and were being seized on by the trenchant opposition to the deal within India. A leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party claimed it revealed a "fiasco that is the result of shoddy homework". 

India announced, and has maintained, a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear tests since May 1998. But it has refused to sign the nuclear treaties. New Zealand and other NSG nations are demanding New Delhi sign the treaties before they grant a waiver that would allow India access to nuclear commerce. 

Issues over nuclear enrichment technology and sharing it with India have also been raised by the objectors to the deal. 

Since some NSG members have themselves been denied enrichment technology, they are reportedly not keen to see an outsider such as India given access to it.