There has been a lot of mention of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), of late, in news and comment in the international media. The NSG is being discussed in context of the Sino-Pak nuclear reactors deal to which United States has taken a strong exception and is currently mobilizing support for raising the issue on the NSG forum. The furore in media is actually aimed at creating pressure to get implementation on the deal halted somehow. The history of NSG can be checked on the net. It was founded in 1974, interestingly in the year when India became the first country from underdeveloped world to carry out a nuclear test, allegedly from smuggled technology. The current NSG members, then, agreed to form the organisation in order to keep a check on transfer of technology and material that could, directly or indirectly, help any outsider develop nuclear capability. Since then, India carried out nuclear tests again in May 1998, forcing Pakistan to follow suit. In doing so, Pakistan become the first nuclear power of the Islamic world. Pakistan had to do it simply because it has to maintain a minimum security deterrent. Since the nuclear test, Pakistan has acted with exemplary responsibility as a nuclear power, with foolproof nuclear assets control mechanisms and an efficient command and security system in place. In the last couple of years, the nuclear technology issue assumed a new dimension for Pakistan when it faced a life-threatening crisis of power shortage which has been bleeding its economy to death. Even as Islamabad was looking towards Washington for help in providing resources to boost its nuclear power generation capacity, Washington went ahead to sign a civil nuclear technology deal with New Delhi instead. Pakistan expected a similar deal in view of its decade long services in war on terror but Washington has been brutal in vaporising the fond expectations on that score. So Pakistan has, naturally, looked towards old friend China which has responded by offering an accord under which Beijing would supply two nuclear reactors to Islamabad. United States is now out to sabotage the Sino-Pak deal, an exact similar of which it has signed itself with India. The NSG is not in the news for nothing. -MOHSIN. A. H. SHAIKH, Lahore, August 26.