The Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement is the name commonly attributed to a bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of India.. The framework for this agreement was a joint statement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush, under which India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and place civil facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and, in exchange, the United States agreed to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation with India.
On August 1, 2008, the IAEA approved the safeguards agreement with India,[2] after which the United States approached the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade.[3] The 45-nation NSG granted the waiver to India on September 6, 2008 allowing it to access civilian nuclear technology and fuel from other countries.[4] The implementation of this waiver makes India the only known country with nuclear weapons which is not a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but is still allowed to carry out nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.[5]
Following are the key aspects of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal:
* The agreement not to hinder or interfere with India's nuclear programme for military purposes.
* US will help India negotiate with the IAEA for an India-specific fuel supply agreement.
* Washington will support New Delhi develop strategic reserves of nuclear fuel to guard against future disruption of supply.
* In case of disruption, US and India will jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include nations like Russia, France and the UK to pursue such measures to restore fuel supply.
* Both the countries agree to facilitate nuclear trade between themselves in the interest of respective industries and consumers.
* India and the US agree to transfer nuclear material, non-nuclear material,...