NSG’s India exception can weaken NPT, says non-proliferation body

September 29th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India can generate 470,000 MW of power by 2050 if "we manage three stages of our nuclear programme well", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here Tuesday. "If we can manage our programme well, our three-stage strategy could yield potentially 470,000 MW of power by the year 2050," Singh said in his inaugural address at the international conference on peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

September 29th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The International Commission on uclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament will hold its fourth egional meeting - for South Asia - in New Delhi on October 24. Participation in the two-day meeting will include several ommissioners, a number of Advisory Board members and some 20 xperts from around the region.

September 29th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Under renewed global pressure for signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India Tuesday reiterated its commitment to a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and stressed that it would participate in negotiations on an Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) as a nuclear weapon state. Welcoming recent initiatives by the US and Russia to slash their nuclear arsenals, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated India's pledge to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and emphasised that global non-proliferation should be universal and non-discriminatory in order to be successful.

September 24th, 2009 NEW DELHI - While the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for universal adherence to non-proliferation treaty, India has reiterated it will not join the pact, which it terms discriminatory, as a non-nuclear weapon state. The UNSC Thursday passed a resolution at a session chaired by US President Barack Obama, that called upon states that have not signed the NPT to join as non-nuclear weapons states, or pending that adhere to the norms of the treaty.

July 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Describing it as a "landmark event", the US has said the end-user monitoring (EUM) arrangement agreed during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit has brought India into the nuclear non-proliferation mainstream. "It's a very significant agreement," State Department Spokesman Robert Wood told reporters Tuesday when asked to explain how the EUM for high-tech defence equipment and technology would work.

July 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Hours after India and the US reached agreement over End Use Monitoring of sensitive technology, President Barack Obama Tuesday sent US Congress his first report on the India-US civil nuclear deal inked last October. "The report covers the period of October 4, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

July 19th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Setting the stage for nuclear business with India, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday sought to downplay differences over nuclear issues, saying the two countries can work together for a 21st century non-proliferation regime, but left it to New Delhi to decide its position on signing the CTBT. "We will work for a 21st century non-proliferation regime.

July 18th, 2009 NEW YORK - President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should "encourage" India to behave like a "vital partner in building a stable world" that they want it to be, an influential US daily said Saturday. "India wants to be seen as a major world power.

July 17th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The US remains committed to the civil nuclear agreement but also wants to engage with India in global non-proliferation efforts, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said ahead of her India visit. In an interview to the CNN-IBN television channel telecast Friday, Clinton indicated non-proliferation was a priority concern for the Obama administration.

July 17th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Hours before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lands in Mumbai to begin her five-day India visit, US ambassador-designate to India Timothy J. Roemer met Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon here Friday and discussed the agenda for talks.

July 17th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The new US envoy to India, Timothy J. Roemer, arrived here Thursday night, ahead of the visit of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who reaches Mumbai Friday.

July 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The US has again assured India that it does not have any real concerns about going forward with the India-US civil nuclear deal as it has proper IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards built into it. "I think that whenever there's one of these agreements, the so-called 123 agreements, there's quite a bit of transparency measures built into it, IAEA safeguards," State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Thursday.

July 11th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India is concerned over the G8 declaration "to curb transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology", which can undermine the "clean" waiver it has obtained from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and plans to take this up during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit here later this month. The G8 declaration adopted at the L'Aquila summit in Italy commits the world's most developed eight countries, which are also members of the NSG, to ban the transfer of ENR items to countries which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

July 9th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India and Germany Thursday held talks on non-proliferation issues and underlined their commitment to nuclear disarmament, officials said here. Germanys Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control Peter Gottwald met Vivek Katju, Special Secretary (Political and International Organisations) in the external affairs ministry, and held talks on a range of nuclear issues.

July 8th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India and Germany are set to step up dialogue on nuclear issues when the German pointsperson on arms control holds two-day talks with Indian officials beginning Wednesday. Germany's Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control Peter Gottwald will meet his counterpart Special Secretary Vivek Katju as well as Deputy National Security Advisor Shekhar Dutt and hold talks with them on a range of nuclear issues.