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“Non-nuclear weapon” states
All states that signed up to the NPT as “non-nuclear-weapon” states should be eligible for importing nuclear material and equipment under NSG Guidelines – since they are required by Article III(1) of the Treaty to have IAEA safeguards that “shall be applied on all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of such State, under its jurisdiction, or carried out under its control anywhere”. In other words, full-scope safeguards. Under Article III(2), NPT signatories agree not to export nuclear material or equipment unless the receiving state has such safeguards in place: “Each State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to provide: (a) source or special fissionable material, or (b) equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material, to any non-nuclear-weapon State for peaceful purposes, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by this Article.” However, the NPT itself doesn’t specify the material and equipment that should not be exported to states without full-scope safeguards.
Nuclear Suppliers Group
It was to fill this gap that, just after the NPT came into force in 1970, international guidelines were established specifying a “trigger list” of materials and equipment falling within the ambit of Article III(2). In 1975, in response to India’s explosion of a nuclear device the previous year, the NSG was set up (see Arms Control Association fact sheet on it here[6]). It now has 45 member states, including all the major nuclear powers. Note, however, that the NSG is voluntary association of states – it was not established by international treaty and it has no enforcement mechanism to ensure that members adhere to its Guidelines. Although the NSG Guidelines provide a necessary supplement to the NPT, NSG members represent a small subset of the 190 states or so that have signed the NPT – nearly every state in the world apart from Israel, India and Pakistan has done so. These states meet as a body every five years to review the operation of the NPT, but the NSG Guidelines, which affect how the NPT operates, are not determined by the NPT signatories, but by the 45 members of the NSG, who have a commercial interest in expanding the market for nuclear material and equipment. This greatly improves the chances of the US getting the NSG Guidelines changed in India’s favour. (To add to the confusion, the agency responsible for policing the NPT – the IAEA – is a different body again, with 139 affiliated states, including Israel, India and Pakistan.)
NSG Guidelines
As I have said, the key feature of the existing NSG Guidelines[7] is that a recipient state must have full-scope IAEA safeguards. This is specified in paragraph 4(a) of the Guidelines: “Suppliers should transfer trigger list items or related technology to a non-nuclear-weapon State only when the receiving State has brought into force an agreement with the IAEA requiring the application of safeguards on all source and special fissionable material in its current and future peaceful activities [my emphasis].” Here, the phrase “non-nuclear-weapon State” has the meaning laid down in the NPT. In Article IX(3) of it, a “nuclear-weapon State” is defined as “one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967”. There are five of them in this world – the US, the UK, Russia, France and China – and there will never be any more. According to this NPT definition, every other state in the world apart from these five is a “nonnuclear- weapon State”, including states outside the NPT like India that have nuclear weapons.
Endorsed by NPT conferences
The NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995 endorsed the NSG’s decision to require fullscope safeguards for nuclear exports (Decision 2 [8], paragraph 12) and the NPT Review Conference in 2000 again supported this principle [9], paragraph 48). Norman Wulf, the US representative at the 2000 Conference, wrote the following in Arms Control Today in November 2000 about its conclusions:
“The conference emphasized the central importance of nuclear export controls and reinforced the requirement in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Guidelines for full-scope IAEA safeguards in non-nuclear-weapon states as a condition of nuclear supply. By doing so, NPT parties again supported the principle that non-NPT parties should not be eligible for the same degree of assistance to civil nuclear programs as NPT parties in good standing. Reinforcement of this guideline is important given some who have questioned whether this principle should be relaxed for India and Pakistan, which have not accepted full-scope IAEA safeguards. The answer from NPT parties is clearly no. In that regard, the United States is seriously concerned about the recent Russian decision to supply fuel to India's Tarapur reactors. This decision … runs counter to the sentiment expressed at the NPT review conference ….” [10]
Plainly, the US stance today towards India is the converse of its stance, and the stance of the NPT review conference, in 2000
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