India and US have agreed on a revised draft seeking an exemption for India from NSG guidelines, which was circulated on Saturday morning among all members of the group ahead of the crucial meet on September 4-5 in Vienna. The draft, sources said, is within the “red lines” given by India. The draft, which was firmed up after a week of consultations, steers clear of mentioning the “testing” word and any reference to CTBT, something that India has strongly resisted despite a handful of NSG countries pushing for it. Similarly, there is no talk of a review mechanism though India is open to holding a regular dialogue on non-proliferation with India. Also, sources said, there is no explicit bar on trading in enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology after India argued that the current NSG guidelines itself don’t have this provision. While there is a proposal to this effect pending in the NSG, India has said the NSG should first reach a consensus on amending the guidelines before singling out India. More so, there is no compulsion on member countries that do not want to be part of ENR trade with India and can choose to do so on their own. Diplomatic sources said they expect NSG members to still raise questions and a possibility of including some changes during the two-day meet could not be ruled out at this stage. It’s learnt that India gave its consent on the revised draft on Friday, following which the US handed it over to Germany, the current NSG chair, that immediately circulated it as demands were growing to shift the dates of the meeting because of the delay in bringing a new draft. Some members were annoyed that Washington was unwilling to give them “reasonable” time to study and take a considered position. Having circulated it today, the 45-member grouping now has time until next Thursday when the meeting is slated to begin. At the first round of meeting on August 21-22, close to 50 amendments including minor changes in language were suggested by various countries. New Delhi and Washington, sources said, have sought to accommodate many of the suggestions that did not affect India’s conditions for a clean waiver. Without losing time, the US is learnt to have already started exercising “maximum diplomatic pressure” and is using all “necessary means” to convince the sceptics in the group. On Thursday, US Ambassador to India David Mulford held a lunch with his counterparts from Switzerland, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands and Austria to drive home the hard message and asked them advise their governments accordingly as large political stakes were involved in the nuclear deal.
