Economist Editorial: A legacy project
FOR India’s embattled prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and America’s soon-to-depart president, George Bush, the waiver for India agreed on September 6th by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is meant to build a lasting legacy: their own. Critics fear its real testament will be lasting damage to the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. Hitherto NSG rules barred nuclear commerce with any country that had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or had not put all its nuclear industry under safeguards operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear guardian. India, which rejects the NPT and has built and tested bombs, will do neither. Instead, in return for the NSG waiver it has merely promised to separate out some designated “civilian” nuclear reactors (the list has still to be formalised) for inspection.