After much contemplation on “Indian concerns”, US on Thursday spread a draft exemption text to Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) members minus offending paragraph. It was a joint effort of India and US in the high level negotiating group, which involved national security advisor MK Narayan, Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns.

 

Both US and India chose an easy way out by erasing the paragraph after India objected to a line in the draft that referred to a key paragraph in the NSG guidelines that stated that the supplier countries are to push the recipient (in this case, India) to accept full scope or comprehensive safeguards (known as CSA in NSG jargon).

 

The draft asks NSG countries to shift trigger list items or technology to the safeguarded civil nuclear facilities in India as long as India meet all of the mentioned non-proliferation and safeguards commitments. Germany, the current chair of NSG, has called a plenary session of the group on August 21-22 with a second plenary possible in early September.