Date:21/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/21/stories/2008082151700100.htm

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Eyes on NSG prize, India prepares for big day

Siddharth Varadarajan

Holds consultations with ‘friendly countries’

Wednesday’s meetings productive: Indian officials
Say they did not detect any strong opposition

Vienna: With less than 24 hours to go before the Nuclear Suppliers Group formally sits down to discuss granting India a waiver from its stringent export guidelines, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon held a series of meetings here Wednesday with diplomats from member countries to press for the speedy adoption of the draft proposal without any changes.

Though the outcome of the August 21-22 NSG session is far from certain, the most important question the NSG needs to resolve for the moment, say Indian officials, is a procedural one. Will the plenary consultation involve the line-by-line parsing of the proposed exemption, as some countries appear to want? Or will the meeting encourage participants to address the totality of the proposal allowing nuclear commerce with India, air their reservations and concerns, but not seek to delay or derail the initiative by insisting on conditions? “Certainly this is the kind of political approach we favour,” a senior Indian official told The Hindu. “Every country places on the record its views but no one blocks the decision, and at the end, the Germans, as chair, declare the text adopted.”

In late evening confabulations India, the United States, Germany, the current chair of the NSG, and Hungary and South Africa, who make up the rest of the nuclear cartel’s ‘troika,’ were trying to resolve this issue.

The NSG will convene in the morning on Thursday but adjourn at 11 a.m. so that members can attend a special briefing by Mr. Menon. “We will make our presentation, explaining our policy, restating our bottom line and answering any questions,” the foreign secretary said.

Describing Wednesday’s series meetings with a range of “friendly” countries including existing and prospective suppliers like Russia and France as well as South Africa and Brazil as “productive,” Indian officials told The Hindu the picture that was emerging on the eve of the NSG’s plenary consultation was one of quiet support for the proposal.

Though some NSG states continue to have reservations about the implications of the exception for the non-proliferation regime, Indian officials said they did not detect any strong undercurrent of opposition, or the crystallisation of dissidence around the demand for specific changes.