The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group

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Monday, Apr 25, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group

R. Ramachandran

From the Indian perspective, maintaining a dialogue with the NSG is important to see if nuclear exports to India can be facilitated under conditions weaker than full-scope safeguards in the future.

AFTER ITS visit to Israel in March and Pakistan early this month, the consultative team from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is scheduled to visit India this week. The NSG consists of 44 member-countries and controls transfers of nuclear goods globally in accordance with two sets of Guidelines — I and II. All the members of the NSG are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Guidelines I stipulate controls over transfer of items included in the NSG's Trigger List, which are meant for direct nuclear use such as nuclear material, fuel-cycle related equipment and reactors, non-nuclear material for reactors and equipment and technology meant for reprocessing, enrichment, fuel fabrication and heavy water production. For transfer of such items to a non-nuclear weapons state (NNWS), the controls require full-scope safeguards (FSS) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on all the nuclear activities of the recipient country.

Guidelines II lay down conditions for transfers of nuclear-related dual-use items and these require only end-use statement and item-specific safeguards.

The definition of a nuclear weapon state for the NSG's purpose is the same as that in the NPT; namely, that which has exploded a nuclear device before January 1, 1967. From the NSG's perspective, therefore, India, Pakistan and Israel are NNWSs.

This is not the first time that India is holding discussions with the NSG. The last such meeting took place on April 7, 2004, when issues of proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy were taken up. It was also decided during that meeting that India would have a regular dialogue with the NSG.

The NSG's dialogue with non-NSG member-countries is part of its "outreach" programme that seeks to engage in consultations with non-member countries because of proliferation concerns. In 2001, the NSG Chair was authorised to constitute a consultative group comprising the current, the predecessor and the next chairs of the NSG for engaging in this dialogue process. The visiting team will be led by Richard Ekwall of Sweden, the present NSG Chair, who will be accompanied by representatives of the Republic of Korea (the past Chair) and Norway (Chair after June 2005). The visit is likely to be on April 26.

The agenda for the current meeting concerns domestic export controls on nuclear goods. This issue has gathered importance after the disclosure of Dr. A.Q. Khan's illegal nuclear network operating across continents. Also, given the fact that it follows the first-ever visits to Israel and Pakistan, the visit may be more significant.

It may be pointed out that that both Israel and Pakistan have communicated their domestic export laws to the IAEA last year, which have been circulated by the IAEA as INFCIRC/632 and INFCIRC/636 respectively. In their bid to be regarded as "unilateral NSG adherents" — first step towards the NSG's recognition of their non-proliferation credentials — both have claimed conformity of their laws with NSG Guidelines. Israel's law came into force on July 1, 2004, and Pakistan's law came into force on September 23, 2004.

Though India has formulated its export controls on sensitive items in 1995, which has been subsequently revised on April 1, 2000, it has not communicated it to the IAEA. Also, the law is currently undergoing another revision. This follows the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 of April, 2004, that calls for harmonised global export controls to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

India too believes that the so-called SCOMET list under the April 2000 law, together with the items controlled under the Atomic Energy Act of 1962, control all nuclear goods effectively. However, perceptions of key NSG members, especially of the U.S. as evident from its discussions under the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) initiative, differ on this count.

In NSG's future deliberations, particularly after the NPT Review Conference in May, two issues may assume importance. In 2000, Russia had proposed the creation of "associate membership" to non-NSG members who are not NPT signatories but have significant nuclear capability and are potential nuclear suppliers, such as India, Israel and Pakistan.

Recently, in its position paper last year for the NPT Review Conference due in May, France has proposed that the NSG avoid unduly stringent export controls for non-sensitive nuclear goods, such as low enriched uranium reactor technology and reactor control equipment, if the recipient non-NSG member-country has adequate export controls. Also, it has called for following what are known as Zangger Rules rather than the NSG Guidelines for all nuclear exports. Zangger Rules require only facility-specific safeguards and not FSS.

From the Indian perspective, maintaining such a dialogue with the NSG is important to see if nuclear exports to India can be facilitated under conditions weaker than FSS in the future. It may be pointed out that earlier India had been not too keen on NSG visits. Clearly, there has been a change of heart in this regard in recent years. Interestingly, the same has been true of Pakistan as well. A NSG team visited Pakistan for the first time during April 11-12 after initial resistance.

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