With the signing of the civilian nuclear cooperation between the US and India, the European Union, the main trade rival to the US, is caught in a bind over a draft that seeks closer economic cooperation with India.

Normally while dealing with third worlds countries, the EU inserts clauses demanding commitments on human rights, international obligations relating to weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The European Commission has proposed a new trade and investment pact with India omitting clauses on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that some EU members say sets a risky precedent.

Annalisa Giannella, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana''s representative for non-proliferation and WMD, said that support for omitting the WMD clause by some EU states would set "a terrible double standard".

She told European parliamentarians, "If we were to adopt for India an approach different from the approach we adopt with other countries, I think we would abandon altogether the idea of having a WMD clause with third countries."

However, European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said the EU executive had proposed a purely technical agreement on trade and investment and added, "The Commission does not routinely include standard political clauses in agreements of this kind. We are committed to non-proliferation and the fight against weapons of mass destruction, but this is not the place for a WMD clause."

Udwin said clauses on WMD and rights were already in a joint action plan agreed by India and the European Union in 2005.

An EU official said India did not want a WMD clause in the trade and investment agreement and commerce minister Kamal Nath was quoted as having said, "This is meant to be a specifically targeted trade and investment agreement, which it will not be if other elements come into it."

EU member states are still debating whether the agreement should be "mixed" - that is including the controversial political clauses, or left purely technical. Udwin said clauses on WMD and rights were already in a joint action plan agreed by India and the European Union in 2005. . Some EU member states are also anxious to avoid offending India, which they see sees as a huge potential market for trade and investment. The EU is keen to have a negotiating mandate by April and one proposal put forward was to include a WMD clause in a separate updated cooperation agreement signed in 1994.

An EU official said the only binding parts of a WMD clause would be for New Delhi to comply with its existing commitments. However, another clause required a commitment from a country to take steps towards accession to other multilateral treaties in the area of non-proliferation and disarmament, suggesting India should start a process towards the NPT. A third clause requires an effective system of export controls related to WMDs.