Nuclear nations resume talks on India trade

Vienna: Forty-five countries resumed crunch talks on Friday on whether to drop a ban on nuclear trade with India, amid efforts by Washington to allay fears the move could be at odds with non-proliferation principles.

Washington's talks with sceptics in the Nuclear Suppliers Group lasted well into the night after an NSG plenary meeting on Thursday failed to make a breakthrough despite US revisions to the draft proposal drawn up two weeks ago.

Washington, scrambling to seal a US-Indian atomic energy deal, was trying to push through a one-off waiver of NSG rules against doing business with states outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) before the two-day NSG gathering ends on Friday.

Without an NSG accord, the US Congress may run out of time to ratify the deal before it adjourns at the end of the month for elections, relegating the matter to an uncertain fate under a new president.

Diplomats said the outcome of the Vienna conclave remained unclear and another meeting might be needed. Decisions by the secretive nuclear export cartel must be unanimous.

They believe changes made to the draft do not sufficiently remove concerns that the US-India deal could subvert treaties meant to stop the production or testing of nuclear weapons.

Washington's No. 3 diplomat, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, was sent to Vienna to head the U.S. delegation at the meeting, underscoring the mounting urgency for a lame-duck Bush administration to salvage the deal.

Washington and some allies assert the US-India deal will move the world's largest democracy towards the non-proliferation mainstream and fight global warming by furthering the use of low-polluting nuclear energy in large developing economies.

NSG critics fear India could use access to nuclear material markets indirectly to boost its bomb programme and drive nuclear rival and fellow NPT outsider Pakistan into another arms race.

To forestall this, they demanded clauses specifying no trade in the event of another nuclear test explosion, no transfers of fuel-enrichment technology that could be replicated for bomb-making, and periodic reviews of the waiver.

India has ruled out attaching conditions, such as a test ban, to an NSG exemption, as a threat to its strategic autonomy.