New Delhi - India said Friday that it does not subscribe to an arms race and is committed to a voluntary, unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing as members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) met in Vienna to decide whether to grant a waiver allowing trade with India in fissile materials. The United States has approached the 45-member group, which controls global trade in fissile materials, to make an exception for India as a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow it to export nuclear materials for Indian civilian reactors.
India has also not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, calling it discriminatory.
"We do not subscribe to any arms race, including a nuclear arms race," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a statement in what is being seen as an effort to sway a group of unbending NSG members. "We have always tempered the exercise of our strategic autonomy with a sense of global responsibility. We affirm our policy of no first use of nuclear weapons."
Mukherjee said India would not be a source of proliferation of sensitive technologies, including fuel-enrichment and fuel-reprocessing transfers - a concern expressed by some NSG members - and would work with the international community for the common objective of non-proliferation.
India has agreed to open civilian reactors that are to be part of a civilian nuclear pact with the United States to international inspections.
Mukherjee said India looked forward to working with the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in implementing India-specific safeguards and insisted that the civilian nuclear initiative would strengthen the international non-proliferation regime.
Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and New Zealand are said to be among the leading countries who have expressed apprehensions on a waiver for India because of proliferation concerns.
