NSG's prescriptive conditionalities not acceptable, says Mukherjee

On board a special aircraft, Aug 23 : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday said that India will not accept any "prescriptive conditionalities" to get an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to operationalise the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. Mukherjee said so to reporters while accompanying President Pratibha Patil on her two-day visit to West Bengal on board a special aircraft.

"We have to see what kind of amendments come. Only then we can decide. But we cannot accept prescriptive conditionalities," said Mukherjee.

On the government's future course of action in the face of reservations expressed by some countries of the 45-member NSG, Mukherjee said that he had been briefed by Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon about the developments in Vienna during the two-day meeting.

On Friday, Menon had described the NSG meet as "constructive and useful" saying "we met a lot of individual delegates of NSG member-countries and had an opportunity to brief them on Thursday."

Meanwhile, Menon will visit the US early next week to hold discussions with American officials in the wake of the NSG deciding to meet next month to consider a waiver for India to carry out nuclear commerce.

The NSG is expected to meet again on September 4 to take a final decision on the issue.

ANI