Block India at NSG at own risk, Mulford warns those holding out

New Delhi, August 28 : A week ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group special plenary meet to consider an exemption for India from its stringent guidelines, the US today stepped up diplomatic pressure on countries that have raised objections and told them that further resistance in the next meeting would jeopardise Western ties with India in the long run.

US Ambassador David Mulford met his counterparts in Delhi from Switzerland, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands and Austria to drive home the hard message and asked them to advise their governments accordingly as large political stakes were involved in the Indo-US nuclear deal.

It is learnt that Mulford took the bold step after a meeting with National Security Advisor M K Narayanan a couple of days ago and the growing urgency in Washington to complete the NSG process on September 4-5. Sources said he was blunt in his message that blocking an exemption for India by asking for inclusions in the draft that were politically impossible for the Manmohan Singh Government to accept would not only freeze the nuclear deal, but also permanently damage future prospects for each of these countries in India.

While he met envoys of these five countries today over lunch, Mulford held separate meetings with mission heads of Canada and Japan on Wednesday. These two countries fall in the category of “mild skeptics” but have been insisting on equally difficult amendments like a periodic review mechanism and bar on enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology besides supporting the call for a commitment on CTBT.

They were told that the US will be bringing a reworked draft to Vienna, but that would not contain any such specific measures or commitment except, perhaps, a partnership with the NSG to further non-proliferation goals. Here again, Mulford is said to have made it clear that rejecting the revised draft would be detrimental to ties with India.

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