India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)

sukhish

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It will impact India if ENR cannot be done domestically the nuclear deal will become a much more costly deal.
well in that case it is going to be a major issue for the government of India. is the text out from the NSG meeting out.
also we would be very careful in dealing with americans from now onwards. India got the clean waiver back 2008, there were no restrictions. so our levers with france and russia did not work after all.
 
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well in that case it is going to be a major issue for the government of India. is the text out from the NSG meeting out.
also we would be very careful in dealing with americans from now onwards. India got the clean waiver back 2008, there were no restrictions. so our levers with france and russia did not work after all.
This may someway be connected to MRCA??
 

sukhish

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back in 2008 reprocessing agreement was the key element of the nuclear deal, infact last year itself that deal was signed. it also allowed india to have two fcailities for the re-processed fuel. I'm still not sure if ENR technologies would be denied to us.
would france and russia also deny us the ENR tech
 
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back in 2008 reprocessing agreement was the key element of the nuclear deal, infact last year itself that deal was signed. it also allowed india to have two fcailities for the re-processed fuel. I'm still not sure if ENR technologies would be denied to us.
would france and russia also deny us the ENR tech
NSG rules apply to all nations.
 

p2prada

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If they can go back on the deal then the deal means nothing anyway!

We should sign the NPT, i dont know why we wont sign that? Haven't all NSG countries signed that deal?
NPT allows only the P-5 to have nukes. If India signs NPT then we have to give away the nukes.

If they allow a P-6 then we have a deal.
 
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The Hindu : News / National : U.S. circulates ‘thought paper' on Indian membership of NSG

U.S. circulates 'thought paper' on Indian membership of NSG

Proving the adage that good news and bad news tend to come together, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) began consideration of an American proposal to enrol India as a member even as the 46-nation cartel voted to ban the sale of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies to it.

A statement issued at the end of the group's meeting in the Netherlands said, inter alia, that it had adopted new guidelines on ENR sales and "discussed the NSG relationship with India."

Prior to the meeting, the United States circulated a confidential "thought paper" among NSG members on the "process" that could get India membership of the body. It suggested two options that would help New Delhi, an outlier, meet most of the membership criteria.

The confidential paper says there are two ways India can be admitted to the NSG. The first is to evolve a criterion for admission. This means tailoring the factors to be considered to "accurately describe India's position" as a non-proliferator and contributor to attempts at disarmament.

The second is to recognise that the factors that should be considered for grant of new membership as per the NSG's procedural arrangement should not be taken to be mandatory criteria. "The procedural arrangement does not require that a candidate meet all of the stated criteria. For that reason NSG members could simply take a decision by consensus to admit India based on its support for the nuclear non-proliferation regime and behaviour," the U.S. has suggested.

The NSG admits new members by consensus on the basis of a 'procedural arrangement,' which stipulates that the proposed candidate must be a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or a regional nuclear weapons free zone, place all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards if it is a non-nuclear weapon state, be in a position to supply items on the NSG control lists, and adhere to the group's guidelines and non-proliferation efforts.

India's membership of the NSG is going to be difficult because this will be the first time the group will consider the case of a country, which has not signed the NPT. Israel and Pakistan are the two other countries, besides India, that have not signed the NPT, while North Korea, which signed, has since walked out.

The U.S. backing for Indian membership of the NSG and other multilateral arms control bodies follows the public commitment made by U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit here in November last year.

Countries opposed to India's membership argue that allowing India to join the NSG could trigger similar demands from Pakistan and Israel.

In its paper, the U.S. has said that it believes the NSG will be justified in assessing India to be a like minded partner based on the steps it has taken and will take to separate its military and civil nuclear programme.

The U.S. is also confident that India will place additional facilities under IAEA safeguards and implement responsible export control policies enforcement. "We recognise that the admission of India to the NSG is a complex issue and will require a thorough discussion before members may be ready to take a decision," noted the paper.
 

sukhish

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that was back in 2008. also has the NSG made ENR guideline public yet. siddarth vardaragan articles talks about the
draft NSG document, but not about the actual guidelines document that was passed. also anand sharma has said that the clean waiver india got from NSG also applies to ENR. if NSG keeps diluting the clean wiaver then in another couple of years the nuclear deal might as well be dead.
 
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Reality, one bite at a time: NSG discusses China-Pakistan deal, defers new ENR rules


NSG discusses China-Pakistan deal, defers new ENR rules


Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Much to India's relief, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on Friday failed to adopt new guidelines that would have led to the denial of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology to countries like itself that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In a statement issued at the end of its two-day plenary meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand, the NSG only said, its members "agreed to continue considering ways to further strengthen the guidelines dealing with the transfer of ENR technologies."

The NSG statement also euphemistically says, "The Group took note of the briefings on developments concerning non-NSG States [and] agreed on the value of ongoing consultation and transparency."

Diplomatic sources told TheHindu this was a reference to China's desire to sell two new reactors to Pakistan at Chashma in addition to the two that were contracted and approved by the NSG in 2004 as part of the country's pre-existing commitments.

Though no details about the discussions on the Chinese proposal were available, the sources said, the NSG statement's reference to the need for more consultation and transparency suggested a lack of consensus on the issue and perhaps even a face-off.

China has suggested the two new reactors were "grandfathered" by its 1991 agreement with Pakistan and should thus be exempted from the NSG ban on sales to non-NPT countries. Other NSG members have responded by noting that the Chinese side made no mention of a third and fourth reactor when they talked about the Chashma-1 and 2 when they joined the group.

On the ENR issue, consensus on the draft new rules proved elusive, thanks to strenuous lobbying by India and resistance from within the 46-nation cartel by a handful of countries such as Turkey. In the run-up to the Christchurch meeting, when it became clear the U.S. was trying to get the new restrictions approved, India worked on Russia, France and also Germany to ensure a deferment.

Official sources said New Delhi sent a clear signal to its friends and partners that the NSG's September 2008 exemption must remain unaffected by any changes adopted since that decision was the product of mutual undertakings by both the NSG and India.

Apart from the NPT rule for the ENR sales, the U.S. has been pushing for mandatory adherence to the Additional Protocol as well as tighter restrictions on the sharing of sensitive technologies with countries that have not so far mastered enrichment or reprocessing.

These conditions were initially opposed by Argentina, Brazil, Canada and South Africa. Canada and Argentina have since reportedly fallen into line but Turkey, which is only now embarking on a civil nuclear programme on the basis of cooperation with Russia and South Korea, does not want to be disadvantaged by tougher rules.
 
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Yes I saw this just now I am glad this did not pass it would have killed the deal if you look at the conditions. It would have been a waste of time for many nations.
 
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that was back in 2008. also has the NSG made ENR guideline public yet. siddarth vardaragan articles talks about the
draft NSG document, but not about the actual guidelines document that was passed. also anand sharma has said that the clean waiver india got from NSG also applies to ENR. if NSG keeps diluting the clean wiaver then in another couple of years the nuclear deal might as well be dead.
Obama was always against this deal even before he became President, he had made it clear if India was not in NPT he did not support this deal, this was an old article but one that came out right when he became president.
 

sukhish

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the new NSG guidelines have been passed, which world are you living in.
 

sukhish

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what a mess. I mean all these years we were celebrating about our execptionalism and at the end it did not hold up. manmohan should explain this. I'm really piss***of from this new.
 
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New NSG norms may put Indo-US nuke deal at risk - Home - livemint.com

New NSG norms may put Indo-US nuke deal at risk

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)—that controls global nuclear commerce—passed a new set of guidelines that can affect India's plans to acquire sensitive nuclear know-how and possibly jeopardize the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal of 2008. The decisions taken by the group have been posted on the group's website.

Evidence that the new norms are imminent also came on Friday from the US, whose spokesman Jay Carney lauded the decision of the 46-member NSG "to approve" new guidelines in a statement uploaded on the White House website.

The development comes despite hectic lobbying by India with NSG members. Earlier this week, an Indian official said New Delhi has "deep reservations" about any move that could affect its prospects to buy critical technology related to the enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) of spent nuclear fuel generated from civilian nuclear reactors.

The new criteria—among other conditions, it says ENR technology transfers will be allowed only if the recipient signs the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT)—has the potential to directly hit the special exception granted to India in 2008 by NSG. The NSG waiver allowed India, as an exception, to buy power plants, equipment and technology from the international market. Access to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and enriching fuel know-how was implicit in this exemption, said Rajeshwari Rajagopalan, senior fellow at New Delhi think-tank Observation Research Foundation. It came despite the country not signing NPT and not opening up all of its atomic reactors for international scrutiny.

The exemption was also part of a process that saw the removal of three-decade-old embargoes against nuclear commerce between India and the world—despite the country having conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998. The NSG waiver was pushed through by the US, with which India worked out a significant bilateral pact in 2008 that opened the doors for the sale of US atomic plants to India. But more than anything else, the India-US pact was seen as the high watermark of the new relationship between the world's oldest and largest democracies.

In his statement, White House spokesman Carney said the US "welcomed" the NSG move to pass the new criteria "covering transfers of sensitive nuclear technologies used for the enrichment of uranium or the processing of spent nuclear fuel".

"This decision establishes agreed criteria that limit allowed transfers only to those nations in compliance with their non-proliferation obligations and that meet agreed standards for nuclear safeguards, safety and security," Carney said. "It further demonstrates the clear determination of nations to strengthen the international non-proliferation regime and build new frameworks for civil nuclear cooperation," said the statement, uploaded early Friday India time.

Lalit Mansingh, former Indian ambassador to the US, said it might be premature to react before the details are clear, but added that there could be serious consequences. "I think we should wait to see the fineprint before reacting. We need to seek a clarification from the NSG chair on whether India can buy ENR technologies. We also need a clarification from the US on this. If this issue is not resolved, it could cause a serious bilateral crisis. We need to resolve this before the visit of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton" for the India-US Strategic Dialogue on 19 July, Mansingh added.

That India was very concerned about the NSG move has been clear from the secret US diplomatic cables made public by the Internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks and published in The Hindu newspaper. In 2009, then Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon wrote to US under secretary of state William Burns stating that an ENR ban at NSG constituted a "derogation" of the bilateral India-US civil nuclear pact. Later, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, too, brought it up with her US interlocutors. Both instances were sourced to Wikileaks by The Hindu.

Overnight Friday, US state department spokesperson Victoria Nuland tried to assuage Indian concerns about new guidelines affecting the 2008 NSG waiver.

"The Obama administration fully supports the 'clean' Nuclear Suppliers Group exception for India and speedy implementation of the US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. Nothing about the new enrichment and reprocessing transfer restrictions agreed to by NSG members should be construed as detracting from the unique impact and importance of the US-India agreement or our commitment to full civil nuclear cooperation," she said in a statement posted on the state department's website.

"The NSG's NPT references, including those in the ENR guidelines, in no way detract from the exception granted to India by NSG members in 2008 and in no way reflect upon India's non-proliferation record," Nuland said, adding the US was fully committed to expanding civil nuclear cooperation with India.
 

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