A recent plenary of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the cartel of 46 countries that have nuclear materials or equipment to offer others, held at Noordwijk in the Netherlands, has reaffirmed its core objective — that such goods cannot be sold to countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

As such, India is to be denied the sale of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology. Indeed, the NSG introduced a new provision to give effect to this particular outcome. The NPT remains the holy grail of the international regime promoted for half a century by the West to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, although it is common knowledge that the Americans and others winked at the clandestine development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme through the aegis of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and his contacts in the West. Nevertheless, getting all countries to sign the NPT (the holdouts being India, Pakistan and Israel; and now North Korea, which recently resiled from the treaty) continues to be cited as a critical aim. It is noteworthy, though, that in 2008, as a special dispensation for India, the NSG waived its usual conditions for transfer of nuclear materials to a NPT non-signatory. It now appears to have gone back on that waiver.
The 2008 waiver was granted in the backdrop of the India-US civil nuclear agreement. American terms for bilateral nuclear trade are extremely stringent, but the administration of then President George W. Bush made an exception for India in the light of its squeaky clean non-proliferation record and its scrupulous adherence to the NPT’s spirit despite remaining outside the treaty. Once America entered into a bilateral agreement with India to buy and sell nuclear ware, Washington also pushed India’s case in the NSG. The result was the 2008 NSG waiver. This was the basis for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurance to Parliament about a “clean” waiver to India, although it was technically outside the NPT. It is worth recalling, however, that some elements in the Bush administration at the time — due to their ideology of disfavouring NPT non-signatories — had tried to scuttle the NSG waiver and made a lot of fuss about the supply of ENR technologies to this country.
Under the terms of the bilateral deal with the US, India was to get a “clean” waiver — that is, one (from existing international provisions) for the entire range of nuclear technologies (including ENR) for all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle, and waiver for the supply of nuclear fuels too for the lifetime of the reactors being purchased overseas and placed under IAEA safeguards. India had pressed this point and got its way then, although there were times when the deal being negotiated with the US appeared close to breaking point. It is thus unfair to say, in the light of NSG’s volte face on ENR sales, that the Prime Minister had knowingly misled Parliament.
Without active American canvassing, the 2008 NSG waiver is unlikely to have materialised. And the US was keen on the India deal for strategic and commercial reasons. Some doubts have crept into US commercial calculations on account of India’s liability law regarding accidents at nuclear plants. (This factor hasn’t quite deterred Russian and French companies.) This is a possible cause for the NSG retreating from a India-specific waiver. Washington’s virtual silence (although the US remains sanguine about India’s NSG membership coming through owing to its efforts) appears a way to mount pressure on New Delhi. India would do well to tell the Americans (and others) just where they got off, but not go ballistic raising a nationalist outcry. India’s policy and record provide sufficient counter-weight to the NSG’s posture.