New Delhi: India may have got a historic waiver at the Nuclear Suppliers Group less than a year ago, but has full nuclear trade been undermined by a G8 declaration in Italy?
Indian officials are closely studying the text, which effectively bans the sale of ENR or enrichment and reprocessing technology to India unless it signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Government sources have told NDTV, however, that this will not impact India's ability to buy fuel and reactors. But there are larger concerns.
Though India does not really need ENR technology, but it would like to buy cheaper components for its ENR facilities from other countries.
None of the nuclear agreements India has signed with the US and France allow ENR transfers yet. These had to be separately negotiated.
The negotiations with America on reprocessing begin in a few weeks and are expected to be tough, especially with the Obama administration.
Therefore, the larger worry is that the G8 declaration undermined the full nuclear trade with India and the clean waiver at the NSG, and if this has happened, there's hardly any guarantee that some other aspect of the 'clean exemption' won't be rolled back.