Robert Blackwill downplays Washington Post report on India-US nuke deal

New Delhi, Sept 5 : Former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill has downplayed a Washington Post's report on the India-US nuclear deal that said the deal would stand terminated if New Delhi conducts a nuclear test.

Blackwill termed the contents of the 26-page document as a communication between two branches of the American Government with no legal or political implications for other countries.

"We do this in the American constitutional system. It's not at all infrequent where either the State Department volunteers to communicate in such a way to the Congress or the Congress requires it, so this is routine," Blackwill said at a conference on India-US relations here on Thursday.

Meanwhile, forty-five nations met on Thursday to try to bridge differences over a move to lift a ban on nuclear trade with India, needed to seal the Indo-US nuclear deal, but seen by some as a threat to non-proliferation.

Washington has lobbied with the countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an exemption to its rules to allow exports to India, which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has tested nuclear bombs and refused to rule out doing so again.

But a revised U.S. waiver draft circulated ahead of the meeting glossed over demands for conditions on such an unprecedented concession raised at a two-day session in August, diplomats from concerned countries said.

Without NSG action in early September, the U.S. Congress may run out of time for final ratification of the accord before it adjourns at the end of the month for autumn elections.

ANI