WASHINGTON: The Bush administration has failed to persuade the Nuclear Suppliers Group to include its proposal for allowing India to buy sensitive nuclear technology from world market on its agenda for Rio de Janeiro plenary session to be held in May, officials and non-proliferation campaigners said.

At a two-day NSG conference in Vienna, which ended on Friday, a US delegation had to face serious questions from other countries that must approve any changes to the rules on trade in nuclear equipment and materials.

Under international rules, such sales are prohibited because India, which possesses a nuclear weapons arsenal, has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the key international agreement preventing the spread of technology and materials that can be used to build weapons.

The NSG, a 45-nation body that regulates trade in nuclear technology, must agree to make an exception for India to allow the deal to proceed. Diplomatic sources in Washington also have confirmed that the Bush administration had been slowed in its efforts to obtain approval from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, at least for now.

The US had sent a delegation of senior officials, led by assistant secretaries of state Richard Boucher and Stephen Rademaker, to convince NSG members to support the deal President Bush signed in New Delhi on March 2. Washington is urging the NSG to discuss exempting India from nuclear export controls.

In an e-mail sent to Washington-based journalists, Executive Director of Arms Control Association Daryl Kimball said that the NSG consultative group meeting wrapped up on Friday and “in a setback for the Bush administration, there was no agreement to put the US proposal on the formal agenda of the plenary meeting in May.”

Mr Kimball said that there was a general discussion of the US-India nuclear deal “but apparently no specific discussion on the text that the US began circulating last week that would create a loophole in NSG trade restrictions.”

Thirty delegates took part in the discussion. France and Britain supported the US move, but Japan, China, and some other nations sought more clarification, Mr Kimball claimed. Some of these questions, he said, were very critical of the Indo-US deal.

“This situation could theoretically change, but even if the US works quickly to revise its proposed changes to NSG guidelines to make a country-specific exemption for India, it is highly unlikely that the NSG states will act on such controversial new proposal at their May meeting,” he added.

“This means that the administration will have an even harder time convincing a sceptical Congress that they must act quickly to exempt India from US nuclear trade restrictions,” Mr Kimball said.

A senior US official said that the United States would honour NSG rules. “We abide by our international obligations. We have obligations to the NSG,” the official said.