Krishna spells out India's commitment on nuke agreements

New Delhi, Aug 11: India has indicated to the Nuclear Suppliers Group that it would strictly adhere to the reciprocity principle in implementing legal obligations by countries who have signed nuclear agreements with it. This follows the June 2011 decision by the NSG to tighten ENR technology exports.

S M Krishna, the External Affairs Minister made a a suo motu statement in Parliament, and said, "The agreements reached for permitting international civil nuclear cooperation with India contain commitments on both sides. We expect all NSG members to honour their commitments as reflected in the 2008 NSG Statement and our bilateral cooperation agreements."

He added, "The 'Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India' issued on September 6, 2008 after an Extraordinary Plenary Meeting of the NSG spells out the scope of our cooperation. That statement contains reciprocal commitments and actions by both sides relating to international civil nuclear cooperation."

In June, the NSG decided to ban export of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to countries that were not signatories of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

However, it is still not clear whether this stance is accepted by supplier countries. But that it implies is that India will exert a lot of diplomatic pressure to ensure its access to ENR remains unshackled.

It can be recollected that India is seeking membership to the four apex non-proliferation organisations -- NSG, MTCR, Wassenaar and Australia groups.

OneIndia News