New Delhi, August 23
Even as India and the United States prepare to revisit the draft NSG waiver to see if any amendments could be made in it, New Delhi today made it clear that it would not accept any prescriptive conditionalities to get an exemption from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

With the NSG failing to achieve a consensus on giving a waiver to India to engage in nuclear trade yesterday, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon headed for Washington to consult the US officials on the wordings and provisions of a fresh draft for the NSG, which will meet again on September 4-5 to take up the nuclear deal issue.

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, who has categorically stated
that changes might to have to be introduced in the draft and India would have to
accept them, is scheduled to be in New Delhi on Monday to meet Indian officials
over the document.

The fresh round of negotiations over the document are likely to be thorny as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told a news agency that India would not accept any prescriptive conditionalities to get NSG exemption.

Mukherjee was yesterday briefed by the Foreign Secretary on the developments in Vienna. However, it was evident that India was willing to fine-tune the text of the draft with Mukherjee saying that New Delhi would have to see what kind of amendments come.

Indian officials, meanwhile, asserted that the US as well as other NSG members knew well how far India could go in making adjustments in the draft. “All NSG members know India’s red lines… we can’t be expected to go beyond a limit in making adjustments,” they said.

The officials, however, did not agree with suggestions that the failure to get exemption yesterday was a setback.

“We were hoping that the waiver would come on August 22, but at the same time are prepared for another session of the NSG,” they added.

They noted that there had been a considerable narrowing down of differences among various countries. It was quite remarkable to see 45 different countries to have one point of view on the single issue of giving exemption to India.

The officials said the concerns of some small countries stemmed not so much from India’s track record on non-proliferation but from the stand of these nations on the nuclear issue.

“For some members like Austria and New Zealand, which are going to the polls soon, the strong anti-nuclear stand among sections of their voters played a crucial role in raising these concerns at the NSG meet. After all, these countries were aware of the sensitivities of their own people and would not like a message to go around that India got the waiver so easily,” the officials said.

Most of the NSG states were in favour of lifting the current ban that prevents nuclear commerce between members of the cartel and India, despite the country not being a signatory to the NPT.

But some NSG members insisted that it should not be lifted unless New Delhi formally says no to further nuclear tests.

The Indian sources asserted that that there was no question of the country accepting any conditions or new provisions in the draft that might compel it to consider walking out of the deal.

Apart from concerns about further nuclear tests by India, some of the NSG
members also have reservations about sharing technologies on enrichment and
reprocessing of fuel.

Since some of the NSG members themselves have been denied these technologies, they are not keen that an outsider like India should be given these privileges.