VIENNA - U.N. nuclear watchdog governors on Tuesday approved a deal allowing extra inspections of India’s atomic industry, a condition of a U.S.-led deal allowing New Delhi to import nuclear technology after a 33-year freeze. Passage of an “Additional Protocol” somewhat expanding the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring rights in India came a month after New Delhi signed a basic nuclear safeguards accord opening its civilian nuclear plants to U.N. inspections.The Additional Protocol would give IAEA inspectors more information on India’s nuclear-related exports, imports and source material, diplomats familiar with the issue said.
But some members of the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors joined the consensus vote only with reluctance, they said. Sceptics felt that while heightened U.N. safeguards were a net gain for a country outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they could have been stronger had there been more time for negotiations, they added. Switzerland, South Africa, Ireland and Cuba protested that the agreement was handed to the board only two days ago, too late to thoroughly assess whether it will really contribute to disarmament,” one diplomat in the closed-door meeting said.
“It doesn’t because there are no provisions to ensure India cannot divert into its military nuclear sector nuclear materials and know-how it obtains abroad for the civilian sector.”
The protocol would give inspectors wider access to IndiaÂ’s programme but not as much as in states that have signed the NPT.
IAEA oversight was stipulated when the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group agreed in September to lift a ban on nuclear trade with India, imposed after its first nuclear test in 1974 and for its refusal to join the NPT. India, Pakistan and Israel are the only countries never to have never signed the NPT.
Washington pushed through the NSG “waiver” because this was indispensable to implementing its own 2005 nuclear cooperation pact to supply India with nuclear technology. U.S. officials said the deal, a major plank in former U.S. President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, would forge a strategic partnership with India, help it meet rising energy demand and open up a nuclear market worth billions of dollars.