India's nuclear deal with US faces crucial test

Updated August 21, 2008 20:07:55

India's controversial nuclear deal with the United States is facing a crucial test in Vienna this week. The all important 45 nation Nuclear Suppliers Group is meeting to discuss whether to give the deal the green light. New Delhi needs the N-S-G to rubber stamp it before it can go to the US Congress for final ratification.

Presenter: Linda LoPresti
Speaker: Phil Goff, New Zealand's Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control.

GOFF: This is an exemption that is being sought, normally an agreement of this nature would not be approved for a country that was not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So New Zealand will be working with other countries that I think are of a like mind; countries such as Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and so on to try to find a way of accommodating the desires of the Indian and the American governments while ensuring that any exemption granted would be supportive of non-proliferation rather than working in the opposite direction.

LOPRESTI: Why should India get preferential treatment? I mean it hasn't as you say signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has tested atomic bombs and it says that it will continue to do so if there is a national security requirement.

GOFF: I think that the Director General for example of the IAEA had come to the conclusion that with proper safeguards there would be some forward progress in ensuring that India's extensive and soon to be rapidly growing nuclear energy be placed under a safeguards agreement that would help prevent the misuse of nuclear materials or technology and the proliferation to countries that could misuse that.

LOPRESTI: So with the safeguard agreement would you like to see tighter controls over India such as with the nuclear tests?

GOFF: Well we'd like to see what's already built as part of the United States Hide Act, which allows the United States to undertake nuclear trade with India, which requires that the deal would cease immediately in the event that India would conduct a nuclear test. India's not currently conducting tests; it says that it's made a domestic decision not to do so. We'd like some certainty around that and should not be an impossible ask of India to say that as long as you, in fact it's not even an ask, it could be built unilaterally into the agreement that this exemption would only apply so long as India did not again test its nuclear weapons.

LOPRESTI: India of course insists that it should have the right to carry out nuclear tests if there is a national security requirement, and it says surrendering that right would make it difficult for the government to survive politically?

GOFF: Well I think our response to India is the same as our response to all other countries that possess nuclear weapons. We do not regard it as being acceptable environmentally or in terms of the threat to human survival as a potential nuclear war to have countries to continue to develop and test nuclear weapons. No country with the possible exception of course of North Korea, which we are working on through the six-party talks, no country is currently testing nuclear weapons. And we don't want to see any country resume testing of those weapons. And New Zealand along with Australia of course crusaded for many years to prevent the French testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific, and our position applies not simply or exclusively to India, it applies to all countries evenly and consistently.

LOPRESTI: And just finally have you hard any rumblings as yet from Vienna as to which way the NSG, the Nuclear Suppliers Group will go on this?

GOFF: Well the Nuclear Suppliers Group it will meet over two days but a number of countries will bring in the requirement for a number of safeguards. One of them is about nuclear testing that we've talked about, but we would also like to see India join up to the IAEA additional protocol allowing broader inspection and access powers. We would also like to see constraints on transfers of sensitive technologies, we would like to see a review mechanism built into any exemption, and we would like to see a termination clause that if India opted out of the safeguards agreement it would need to return its goods and technology received as part of the exemption. None of those things are exceptionable in my view, none of them are unreasonable, they're the sort of safeguards that you would want to have if this agreement is to progress.