India not to accept NSG waiver if 'red lines' are crossed

National Security Adviser M K Narayanan made it clear that inclusion of any clause on testing, periodic review or denial of enrichment and reprocessing technology in the text of the NSG waiver would be unacceptable and hoped a way around these issues would be found through diplomatic efforts.

"There is no question of cosmetic or otherwise. What we are really asking is, there are certain issues on which there are certain red lines drawn by us because those are the commitments that had been made by our Prime Minister," he told

Karan Thapar's Devil's Advocate programme when asked whether cosmetic changes would be acceptable to India.

"On red lines we cannot, that's what we told our parliament that these are sacrosanct and if these are not met we cannot endorse the agreement," Narayanan said.

Asked to comment on some NSG member countries' position that the cooperation should be terminated if India were to conduct any test, Narayanan said the usage of word testing would not be acceptable to India.

"I presume testing will be difficult for us to, so we will find ways around it. We are clear that whatever we finally agree to in NSG should be something that we can sell to parliament," the National Security Adviser said.

He, however, expressed confidence that a way out would be found on this issue through "creative diplomacy".

"Hopefully we will find a way on it. I think it will be possible for us to surmount some of these obstacles. On demands for exclusion of enrichment and reprocessing technology in the NSG waiver, he said it will not be acceptable to India.

Emphasising that India does not want to be "singled out", he said "NSG does not have ban on enrichment and reprocessing technology transfer per se... unlike the US, none of the countries have ban in their countries (on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology)."

"We don't want some countries' individual predilections to be performing part of huge package of items in the NSG," Narayanan said.

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