When nuclear sheriffs quarrel

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

NOBODY feels much natural love for a shadowy group of self-appointed policemen, engaged in a tough job which some outsiders resent. Yet there is one such band of brothers that does noble work. For more than 30 years, the effort to halt the spread of nuclear weapons has relied, at a practical level, on a small, publicity-shy bunch of officials from a club called the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Behind closed doors, this 45-nation fraternity stitches up rules whose aim is to control trade in nuclear materials, equipment and technology. They don't always succeed. North Korea, Iran, (a subsequently reformed) Libya and others tapped into a nuclear black market that was run for years from Pakistan. But now the fraternity itself is under strain, with perilous consequences for world peace.

These problems have come at a bad time. Many governments are considering nuclear power plants, to cut greenhouse emissions and meet rising energy demand. It will take clearer, tighter rules on transfers to prevent technology sold for civilian nuclear purposes from being misused. Yet at a meeting this month, the NSG will be under strain in several ways.

One new source of strain is a statement by China, an NSG member since 2004, that it now plans to sell two new nuclear reactors to Pakistan. If that goes ahead, it will flout an agreed ban on nuclear trade with countries that do not have all their nuclear industry under international safeguards.

A second problem is the opposition of some NSG members, especially Canada and Brazil, to criteria proposed this year for curbing trade in the most sensitive nuclear technologies: those for enriching uranium or producing plutonium, materials that can be made into reactor fuel or, when refined, into the fissile core of a bomb.

The two issues have become linked because of a third row that has left tempers badly frayed. The last time the NSG met, in September, America pushed through an exemption to the nuclear-trade rules for India. This fulfilled a promise made by George Bush to India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in 2005 in an effort to cement a new friendship and help balance the rising influence of China. The American move drew open criticism from some NSG members and grumbles from others.

Like Pakistan and Israel, India has stayed outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), building nuclear weapons instead. Under NSG rules, none of the three should be entitled to import either civilian or military nuclear technology and materials. Like the others, India still bars inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, from some of its nuclear sites.

Yet for the first time in decades, India's NSG waiver will enable it to import foreign fuel and other technology for its civilian nuclear industry: it is the only non-NPT country to get that perk.

Pakistan wants similar treatment, but there is no realistic hope of that. Its government has form in the proliferation business, although it conveniently blames an impressive series of black-market sales on one rogue scientist, Adbul Qadeer Khan. But China feels that if rules can be bent for India, America's friend, they can be broken for its own chum, Pakistan.

When China joined the NSG, it insisted that two reactors it said were already promised to Pakistan should still be built (the second is now nearing completion). Other NSG members reluctantly agreed, on the understanding that there would be no more nuclear sales to Pakistan. Drawing such a line was thought worth the price, as long as there really was a change in China's behaviour. There had been suspicions (later confirmed from drawings found in Libya) that in earlier times, when it was more careless about proliferation, China had actually given Pakistan the workable design for a bomb.

Laxity all round

By ending a period of self-restraint over sales to Pakistan, China is undermining the credibility of the NSG. But so are others. Two years ago, when Russia broke ranks, using specious “safety” arguments to sell fuel to India for two reactors that were running short, the Bush administration protested loudly. But recently, with their own India deal on the books, the Americans have been slower to denounce misbehaviour. This fuels fears that by creating an India-sized hole in the NSG's rules, America is causing the whole system to unravel.

Meanwhile, the row over India is having other ill-effects. It is complicating efforts to define criteria for the transfer of sensitive uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing technologies. India says it must now get “full” and “unrestricted” nuclear trade. Others disagree, noting that technology supplied for making civilian fuel could easily be misused by India to boost its stocks of fissile material too.

America's own laws already forbid it from selling India such technologies; indeed it is mandated to slap sanctions on any state that helps India in that way. Yet the Bush administration resisted efforts by some NSG members to write the necessary restrictions into the club's nuclear waiver for India; it used the argument that no country was thinking of supplying the Indians with that sort of technology.

Meanwhile, the effort to come up with global, proliferation-proof criteria, under way for at least five years, has run into problems. As part of an effort to push the India deal as quickly as possible through Congress, America's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, vowed to give “highest priority” to the effort to secure a decision at this month's NSG meeting. But to achieve that goal would require the sort of high-level pressure that got the India deal accepted, and there is no sign of that yet.

In 2004 George Bush had called for a global moratorium on transfers of sensitive technology to countries that did not already have fully functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants. The idea has since been endorsed by annual G8 summits (of the G7 group of rich economies, plus Russia). But this year the G8 dropped the idea.

For one thing, Canada objects. It has some of the world's largest reserves of high-quality raw uranium, and one of the best records in non-proliferation. It wants the option of profiting from any nuclear renaissance by acquiring the technology to enrich its own uranium for export, rather than leaving all the profits to countries with a foot in the business, like America, France, Japan and Russia—and India.

Brazil is another refusenik. Most other NSG members could agree on criteria for sensitive nuclear trade. For example: membership of the NPT (thus blocking such dealings with India); being in good standing with the IAEA (which rules out Iran); and the application of advanced IAEA safeguards under an Additional Protocol that countries are encouraged to sign. But Brazil won't sign the Additional Protocol. It has a pilot enrichment plant at Resende, and it is limiting the access that inspectors enjoy. This is supposedly to protect commercial secrets, and to uphold the idea that enhanced inspections are voluntary. Some suspect, however, that Brazil wants to hide the fact that some technology came through less-than-formal channels.

The NSG is meant to work by consensus. Frayed tempers, bruised feelings and the deliberate bending and breaking of rules that have taken years to create are now threatening to break the posse up.