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- Joined
- Dec 14, 2011
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India's entry into NSG club may get easier post-July.
Indrani Bagchi, TNN | Mar 1, 2012, 06.02AM IST
NEW DELHI: As foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai prepares to engage the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an eventual Indian membership, New Delhi is signaling that it will press ahead despite the NSG's decision to constrain transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology to non-NPT nations. Mathai travelled to Vienna on Wednesday to meet the NSG troika - the US, the Netherlands and New Zealand - along with Venkatesh Varma, who is in charge of disarmament issues in the ministry of external affairs.
However, with the US assuming the presidency of the global nuclear body, India's path towards membership may be easier. The US takes the lead in NSG from June, and the next plenary is planned in Seattle, USA. The Netherlands is the current chair.
The Indian quest for membership to the four non-proliferation regimes - NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group - took on a serious tone after the US President Barack Obama formally committed US support to helping India get into these regimes, during his visit to India in November, 2010. Later, India made it clear that it would pursue its membership to all four "in tandem" rather than taking them serially.
The US formally raised the question of India's membership to the NSG at successive plenary meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand and Noordwijk, the Netherlands. To overcome the "problem" of India's non-accession to the NPT (a number of these regimes say they require countries to be signatories to the NPT), the US circulated a paper among the NSG members suggesting that India's NPT membership need not be a "pre-requisite".
This may have been somewhat difficult for many members to swallow. But simultaneously, the US also piloted a change to the NSG guidelines that would effectively keep crucial ENR technologies out of India's reach.
However, the NSG itself took a massive beating when China announced that it would transfer two more nuclear reactors - Chashma III and IV - to Pakistan, without bothering to go to the NSG for a waiver, like the US and India did for their nuclear deal in 2008. The Chinese transfer went through the NSG, despite some dissenting voices, and China actually got away with its "explanation" that these reactors had been "grandfathered", in other words, signed before China acceded to the NSG. Though nobody believed it, the fact that NSG quietly acquiesced was a sign of the changing global power relations. It made India more determined to join NSG as a member.
Last year, former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao had said, "We don't believe the next NSG meeting will decide on India's membership but would like timelines so that a positive decision is there for the four processes."
India's entry into NSG club may get easier post-July - The Times of India
Indrani Bagchi, TNN | Mar 1, 2012, 06.02AM IST
NEW DELHI: As foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai prepares to engage the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an eventual Indian membership, New Delhi is signaling that it will press ahead despite the NSG's decision to constrain transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology to non-NPT nations. Mathai travelled to Vienna on Wednesday to meet the NSG troika - the US, the Netherlands and New Zealand - along with Venkatesh Varma, who is in charge of disarmament issues in the ministry of external affairs.
However, with the US assuming the presidency of the global nuclear body, India's path towards membership may be easier. The US takes the lead in NSG from June, and the next plenary is planned in Seattle, USA. The Netherlands is the current chair.
The Indian quest for membership to the four non-proliferation regimes - NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group - took on a serious tone after the US President Barack Obama formally committed US support to helping India get into these regimes, during his visit to India in November, 2010. Later, India made it clear that it would pursue its membership to all four "in tandem" rather than taking them serially.
The US formally raised the question of India's membership to the NSG at successive plenary meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand and Noordwijk, the Netherlands. To overcome the "problem" of India's non-accession to the NPT (a number of these regimes say they require countries to be signatories to the NPT), the US circulated a paper among the NSG members suggesting that India's NPT membership need not be a "pre-requisite".
This may have been somewhat difficult for many members to swallow. But simultaneously, the US also piloted a change to the NSG guidelines that would effectively keep crucial ENR technologies out of India's reach.
However, the NSG itself took a massive beating when China announced that it would transfer two more nuclear reactors - Chashma III and IV - to Pakistan, without bothering to go to the NSG for a waiver, like the US and India did for their nuclear deal in 2008. The Chinese transfer went through the NSG, despite some dissenting voices, and China actually got away with its "explanation" that these reactors had been "grandfathered", in other words, signed before China acceded to the NSG. Though nobody believed it, the fact that NSG quietly acquiesced was a sign of the changing global power relations. It made India more determined to join NSG as a member.
Last year, former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao had said, "We don't believe the next NSG meeting will decide on India's membership but would like timelines so that a positive decision is there for the four processes."
India's entry into NSG club may get easier post-July - The Times of India