Vienna: A marathon two-day session intended to approve a one-off waiver of NSG rules against nuclear exports to India, a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has extended into the third day, with three countries, New Zealand, Austria and Ireland holding out against the deal, and China providing active outside support.

The talks, meant to last only two days, will now resume on the third day from 11:00am (0900 GMT) on Saturday, September 06, 2008

The deal is intended to lift a 34-year-old embargo on nuclear trade with India and constitutes a major policy initiative by the Bush administration to bring India into the mainstream of nuclear trade and commerce.

With US negotiators in Vienna reaching an impasse with a clutch of six countries, it appears that president George W Bush and secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, both got into the act contacting their counterparts in these nations. This would appear to have had some effect in that three holdout countries, those of the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland finally split ranks with the others.

With a firmly dug-in trio of Austria, New Zealand and Ireland refusing to budge, and egged on in their intransigence by China, US negotiators put on a brave face saying they were "pleased with the significant progress … made throughout the day."

"Some work still needs to be done. A number of mirror images need to be added to the current talks and ideas in the draft...we want to have more effective and qualitatively improved security architecture," said Peter Launsky, an Austrian foreign ministry official.

Launsky also said the waiver draft circulated by the US required incorporating some "auxilliary measures."

Speaking to reporters after the adjournment, acting US undersecretary for arms control and international security, John Rood, said he felt "confident" an accord could be reached.

Earlier in the day, before proceedings began, India issued a statement insisting it had "a long-standing and steadfast commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of nuclear weapons."

"We remain committed to a voluntary, unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. We do not subscribe to any arms race, including a nuclear arms race," the government statement said.

India had "an impeccable non-proliferation record," the statement also said. It "will not be the source of proliferation of sensitive technologies, including enrichment and reprocessing transfers. We stand for the strengthening of the non-proliferation regime," it added.

This is a second meeting of the NSG being held in two weeks intended to change rules that will allow a waiver for India. This, however, requires unanimous approval at the NSG, which is th reason for all the drama currently being enacted at Vienna.

Earlier, the International Atomic Energy Agency had approved an India-specific safeguards agreement in August. A clearance from the NSG is the next stage to be crossed before the deal can be finally approved by the US Congress.