<p>The issue is likely to be among the top agendas when Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will hold meetings with her US counterpart William J Burns and other officials of the American Government’s State Department during her visit to Washington DC next month.<br /><br />US President Barack Obama had voiced America’s support for India’s membership in the NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group during his visit to New Delhi in November last year.<br /><br />India already qualifies to get into the export control regimes Wassenaar Arrangement, which controls worldwide transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies. So it does also for the Australia Group, an informal arrangement to allow the exporting or transshipping countries to minimise the risk of assisting chemical and biological weapon proliferation. <br /><br />Highly placed sources said New Delhi just needed to impose export controls over all items on the control lists of the WA and AG to get membership of the two regimes. <br /><br />The AG’s control list included chemical weapons precursors, dual-use chemical manufacturing facilities and equipment and related technology and software, dual-use biological equipment and related technology and software, biological agents, plant pathogens and animal pathogens.<br /><br />The WA maintains “sensitive” and “very sensitive” lists of dual-use goods and technologies and a list of munitions. <br /><br />Senior officials in New Delhi said India had of late started the process of aligning those of its own with the control lists of the WA and AG.<br /><br />The Obama Administration last Monday amended US Export Administration Regulations by removing nine entities linked with Indian Space Research Organisation and Defence Research and Development Organisation from the Entity List of the American government’s Department of Commerce. The entities on the list are barred from access to certain sophisticated dual use technologies of the US.<br /><br />The US also removed the “Country of Concern” tag that was attached to India under its Export Administration Act. It instead added India to a list of preferential Country Group, which consists of members of the MTCR.<br /><br />The US move to add India in the preferential Country Group is seen as Washington’s recognition of India’s nonproliferation record and its adherence to the MTCR, thus brightening the prospects of its becoming a member of the export control regime.<br /><br />Rao and Burns, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, however, are likely to spend more time discussing the roadmap for India to get into the NSG – the elite club of 46 countries controlling export and re-transfer of nuclear materials and technologies around the world. <br /><br />The NSG has no written charter, but its membership is linked to adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, which New Delhi did not sign.</p>
<p>The issue is likely to be among the top agendas when Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will hold meetings with her US counterpart William J Burns and other officials of the American Government’s State Department during her visit to Washington DC next month.<br /><br />US President Barack Obama had voiced America’s support for India’s membership in the NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group during his visit to New Delhi in November last year.<br /><br />India already qualifies to get into the export control regimes Wassenaar Arrangement, which controls worldwide transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies. So it does also for the Australia Group, an informal arrangement to allow the exporting or transshipping countries to minimise the risk of assisting chemical and biological weapon proliferation. <br /><br />Highly placed sources said New Delhi just needed to impose export controls over all items on the control lists of the WA and AG to get membership of the two regimes. <br /><br />The AG’s control list included chemical weapons precursors, dual-use chemical manufacturing facilities and equipment and related technology and software, dual-use biological equipment and related technology and software, biological agents, plant pathogens and animal pathogens.<br /><br />The WA maintains “sensitive” and “very sensitive” lists of dual-use goods and technologies and a list of munitions. <br /><br />Senior officials in New Delhi said India had of late started the process of aligning those of its own with the control lists of the WA and AG.<br /><br />The Obama Administration last Monday amended US Export Administration Regulations by removing nine entities linked with Indian Space Research Organisation and Defence Research and Development Organisation from the Entity List of the American government’s Department of Commerce. The entities on the list are barred from access to certain sophisticated dual use technologies of the US.<br /><br />The US also removed the “Country of Concern” tag that was attached to India under its Export Administration Act. It instead added India to a list of preferential Country Group, which consists of members of the MTCR.<br /><br />The US move to add India in the preferential Country Group is seen as Washington’s recognition of India’s nonproliferation record and its adherence to the MTCR, thus brightening the prospects of its becoming a member of the export control regime.<br /><br />Rao and Burns, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, however, are likely to spend more time discussing the roadmap for India to get into the NSG – the elite club of 46 countries controlling export and re-transfer of nuclear materials and technologies around the world. <br /><br />The NSG has no written charter, but its membership is linked to adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, which New Delhi did not sign.</p>