India’s communist parties announced plans July 8 to withdraw from the governing coalition over New Delhi’s controversial nuclear deal with the United States. The Congress-led government will likely survive the pullout, but time is running out for the deal to succeed.

Pakistan has said that India’s civilian nuclear trade agreement with the US should open the way for a similar deal with Islamabad.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters that Washington should not discriminate between South Asia’s two nuclear armed nations.

Pakistan has long opposed efforts by the US administration to push through the deal with India.

Critics warned that approving it could lead to a regional nuclear arms race.

Sep 11th 2008 | DELHI
From The Economist print edition
Celebrating a diplomatic triumph

AT THE atomic level, the laws of classical physics bend in intriguing ways. On September 6th, the world’s nuclear rules proved equally pliable. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-nation cartel that limits trade in nuclear materials and technology, passed a “waiver”, allowing it to do business with India (see article). Only five other countries (America, Britain, China, France and Russia) both enjoy the privileges of nuclear commerce and have nuclear weapons. And unlike India, those other five have all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (although America and China have yet to ratify the latter).

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This diplomatic coup was all the more notable because India is the reason the cartel exists. It was formed to prevent a repeat of India’s 1974 nuclear test, which exploited the civilian nuclear help India received under America’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative. This was, the Times said, a “delicious irony”.

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India’s nuclear waiver
A legacy project

Sep 11th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Mourning an exemption that may defeat the rules

FOR India’s embattled prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and America’s soon-to-depart president, George Bush, the waiver for India agreed on September 6th by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is meant to build a lasting legacy: their own. Critics fear its real testament will be lasting damage to the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

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The NSG was set up precisely to stop countries doing what India did to get a start in the bomb business: abusing technology and skills provided for civilian purposes. The group’s ban on trade with countries that break the non-proliferation rules has been the chief underpinning of the NPT regime. Waive the ban and the NSG will have little point. It should refuse to make an exception for India. And so should America’s Congress.

Aug 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition
There should be no exemption for India from the world’s nuclear rules

IN A dangerous and unstable world, isn’t cementing friendship with an up-and-coming power such as India worth breaking a few rules for? That is the reasoning behind the Bush administration’s championing of a controversial civilian nuclear deal with India, which George Bush and India’s Manmohan Singh struck in 2005. To take effect it now needs only an India-sized hole to be punched next week in the global rules on nuclear trade and then a final nod from America’s Congress.

The trade restrictions of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) are supposed to apply to countries that, like India, have built bombs rather than sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In return for exempting India from these restrictions, the Bush administration hopes India will be a bulwark against China. Doubters in Congress and opponents abroad have also been lectured on the supposed benefits of bringing India into the “non-proliferation mainstream”.