India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group

The New York Times Op-Ed section was on a roll yesterday. First, the two Georgia-related pieces and now this. A little background. A couple of years ago, President Bush of the US and Prime Minister Singh of India created a deal wherein India would get access to the international nuclear market (governed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group) without having signed either the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which are a prerequisite to being able to deal in uranium on the world markets. The authors, rightly, suggest that President Bush's appeal to the Nuclear Suppliers Group to let India join without becoming a signatory of the two treaties should be ignored by the members of the group.
As I wrote earlier, the deal that India made with the US is an amazing one for India; so much so that I thought that the vote of no-confidence was rather pathetically politically-based. While it was a good deal for India, I do not believe it to be the best idea for the rest of the world; India has repeatedly flaunted international rules on nuclear proliferation, never having signed either of the two treaties. While the US has also not signed the treaty, most of the other 46 nations have. This might be a hard thing for India to deal with, considering its nuclear race with its neighbor, Pakistan, but the world community should see the forest for the trees: to let India trade on the international uranium market without committing to non-proliferation would be a dangerous precedent to set.