"It is vital that these and other states stand their ground," Kimball maintained.

It has been pointed out that over the weekend the US State Department worked on a revised draft proposal for consideration at the next scheduled NSG meeting on the topic on September 4-5 in Vienna.

"There are signs, however, that the process of developing a revised draft is taking so long that the other 44 members will not have sufficient time to analyse the proposal and work through their respective national political processes to enable them to take a decision by next week," Kimball said.

Furthermore, given India's continuing demands for a "clean and unconditional" exemption, it is unlikely that the United States can find a way to bridge differences, especially in such a short period of time, he said making the point that as of last afternoon the US had still not delivered its revised proposal to NSG Chair Germany.

"...Some Indian officials and commentators have suggested that New Delhi may walk away from the deal if the NSG establishes Hyde Act-like requirements. If that occurs, so be it," Kimball said going on to bring up the time factor remaining in the US Congress to get the Initiative through.

"The Indian government's demands have been so unreasonable that the Bush administration simply can't ram an India-specific exemption through the NSG without accepting substantial changes and some common sense restrictions and conditions" he said.

"In addition, many NSG states have done their homework and are being reminded why the proposal to exempt India would be a nonproliferation disaster. NGOs and experts from nearly two dozen countries have been working for months to publish opeds, encourage newspapers to write editorials critical of the deal, send letters to their foreign ministers, and meet with their parliamentarians to help encourage their governments to help reduce the damage to the nonproliferation system" he added.