India says NSG clearance is U.S. responsibility

The Hindu
Aug 23, 2008

VIENNA: The United States’ inability to deliver a key part of its side of the July 2005 nuclear bargain with New Delhi became apparent on Friday as the Nuclear Suppliers Group ended an extraordinary plenary meeting without reaching agreement on a proposal to waive its restrictive export guidelines for India. More crucially, the fact that India will now be asked to accept changes in the draft waiver that could conceivably limit the scope of nuclear cooperation or place conditions on it of one kind or another suggests the three-year-old nuclear deal could well be approaching its most serious break point to date. Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is now set to fly directly to Washington from Vienna to discuss the issues which arose in the NSG meeting and examine the American proposals, if any, for a change in the wording of the waiver. But it is apparent that there is little scope for India to accommodate the kind of demands a number of NSG countries made in the two-day meeting.