Washington: After an inconclusive meet in Vienna, when the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) failed to ratify a proposed waiver draft for India, Indian foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, is now headed for Washington. The 45-member NSG cartel operates by consensus, and so it becomes important for it to take all points of view onboard in order to arrive at a decision.

India is seeking an exemption from the NSG's normal rules of conduct that would allow it to join the international mainstream of nuclear commerce. India is a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and this puts it in a conflicting position with this international cartel. Along with the United States, India is seeking a waiver to a ban on trade in nuclear materials and technologies that has been in place since 1974, soon after this Asian country conducted its first nuclear explosion.

Menon, who reaches Washington on Monday, will have talks with his counterpart, US undersecretary of state William Burns, who now replaces Nick Burns, Washington's former key negotiator on the India-US nuclear deal.

To be fair, it was anticipated that there would be differences of opinion at the meet and a section of 'NPT ayatollahs' would try and put a spanner in the works. Since the cartel is obliged to operate through consensus a second round of meetings was widely anticipated. This has now come to pass and the cartel will meet again on 4-5 September.

Taking a positive outlook on the proceedings, Menon told reporters in Vienna that no NSG member was against giving India a special exemption and the meeting saw a "narrowing of differences" over the issue.

"There has been a narrowing down of differences between the various countries. It is quite a remarkable feat that 45 different sovereign nations should decide to have one point of view over any issue," Menon said.

Reports suggest that where the NSG conclave came unstuck on a number of issues including the course of action to be adopted in case India tested a nuclear device again. It observes a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests.

Though no nation expects India to sign up for the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) members did mull over the problem of having to deal with a situation where India decides to test again. Here, some members felt that the waiver granted by the NSG ought to be terminated immediately. Others wanted a more detailed consultation process built into the waiver draft than that contained in paragraph 16 of the guidelines.

Another sticky point would have been an insistence by some members to restate in the waiver draft their belief in the desirability of all countries acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Though it would have been pointed out that such affirmations would be unacceptable to India, member opinions need to be taken onboard and such ideological positioning ensured that the conclave was unable to resolve the issue on hand.

Another sticky point is the question of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology and equipment, where the NSG would have been unable to resolve points of view for reasons specific to them.  The NSG has discussing this for years, even before the India issue came along, and has failed to reach agreement among themselves about a general tightening of export rules. So some countries have suggested that this particular issue be postponed pending a final revision of the NSG's guidelines.

Finally, and for India possibly the most contentious, is the suggestion by some members to incorporate a 'review' provision in the proposed waiver draft. This would entail creating some kind of a monitoring mechanism which would assess the extent to which India is abiding by its non-proliferation commitments. Other members felt that they would much rather make their own assessments than be tied down to NSG perceptions on Indian compliance.

From the Indian point of view, such 'killer' suggestions would ensure an unraveling of the Indo-US initiative.