New Delhi: The US is expected to share with India the revised text of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) draft on Friday, five days ahead of the second NSG meeting in Vienna. It's not clear whether India has received the draft as yet though.
There are at least 20 countries that have proposed as many as 50 amendments to the draft.
Indian diplomats have said that they will accept only cosmetic changes to the draft. Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon was in Washignton to finetune the language.
Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday reiterated India's insistence on a clean clean waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but he made no reference to unconditional exemption.
"What we want we have made very clear. We are interested in the clean waiver from the NSG. We have presented our case and made our position clear to interlocutors. The NSG couldn't finalise things on August 21 and August 22 and it is now reconvening on September 4 and 5. We are talking to interlocutors and directly talking to NSG countries. But now we have to wait for the outcome of these talks," Mukherjee said.
Some NSG members like Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Norway are pushing for adding extra conditions like the termination of nuclear cooperation in case of India conducting a nuclear test and periodic review of India's compliance with non-proliferation norms before granting a waiver to New Delhi from the existing rules of nuclear trade.
Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar, a key Indian interlocutor on the nuclear deal, also underlined that New Delhi will not accept any conditions outside the July 18, 2005 civil nuclear understanding between India and the US.
"We have done everything that was possible. We can't accept any more conditionalities," Kakodkar said on the sidelines of a lecture he delivered on Managing Atoms for Human Welfare at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, India's premier strategic think tank.
"The whole thing has to be within the parameters of the July 18, 2005 civil nuclear understanding. Language may change but the substance will not change. The country has all along a standing policy and it remains," he underlined.
A few weeks ago, Mukherjee had warned that India will not be pushed beyond what is in the draft waiver.
"We have to see what kind of amendments come. Then only we can decide. But we cannot accept prescriptive conditionalities," he said.
India was reportedly unhappy with the draft of the NSG waiver shown by the US. Reports had said the draft underscores non-proliferation issues and also did not give India the unconditional exemption it has sought.
Reportedly, the draft said if India carried out a nuclear test, supplier countries could review nuclear cooperation with this country.
India is worried that this could make the NSG waiver unimplementable, discouraging nuclear trade with supplier countries such as France or Russia.
In fact Government sources said the waiver draft reflected the concerns of countries like New Zealand and Austria that have no nuclear industry and therefore no stake in commerce with India.
However, nuclear experts believe India will not lose much.
India Inc Looking Forward to N-Deal
With the nuclear deal looking close to completion, companies are getting ready to take advantage of it.
Sources have told Network 18 that Reliance Industries is looking to foray into nuclear power generation.
The company is in talks with a French nuclear power company and is searching for about eight to ten sites in India.
When contacted RIL refused to comment on this market speculation. Mukesh Ambani said in June that he sees a potential growth in alternative energy
(With inputs from agencies)
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