India gets a clean NSG waiver finally
After a long wait, the 45-member NSG passed by consensus a ���clean waiver��� to start nuclear commerce with India. Now India can trade with different countries to meet its demand of nuclear fuel for reactors to produce energy
A formal announcement will be made shortly in Vienna, by the chairman of the 45-member powerful cartel that controls the global supply of nuclear fuel and technologies.
External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was part of Friday’s late night consultation with the Americans on the changed language in the draft, apprised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the developments in the NSG on Saturday morning.
The NSG’s decision to grant India a “clean waiver” from its existing rules, which forbid nuclear trade with a country, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), came after three days of intense diplomacy by the US in the nuclear cartel.
External affairs minister declared the decision historic and said this will start a new chapter for nuclear cooperation. Mukherji said that the draft is in tune with the commitment given by the PM in Parliament. The prime minister and main architect of the deal expressed his happiness over the development and thanked members of NSG. President Bush earlier called prime minister to talk over the issue.
Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India, Anil Kakodkar, and assured that the right of test has been preserved and there is no mention of test in the final draft. He assured that nothing is in the draft that India cannot accept.
Along with government technicians, officials and scientists from all over country expressed happiness over the NSG waiver. This waiver means India can now trade with different countries to meet its demand of nuclear fuel for reactors to produce energy.
Now the 123 Agreement will go for approval to US Congress.
.To do global nuclear commerce without satisfying the precondition of being an NPT signatory requires a 'waiver'. As China had vowed to "find a way to strike a balance between nuclear nonproliferation and peacefull use of energy" a conditional linkage of commitment by India to NSG exemption has been established. In fact India's promise of "voluntary, unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing" has been described as the 'basis' of the waiver. By this token, there can be no justification for not granting such a waiver - call it clean or dirty of conditional or unconditional - to Pakistan, Iran or North Korea. China has already demanded that ALL countries are entitled to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes as long 'integrity and validity of the international nuclear nonproliferation system' is maintained. What then is the strange animal named 'clean' waiver?
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