Vienna - If the board of the UN nuclear watchdog approves an inspection agreement with India on August 1 as planned, it could set a precedent for other nuclear weapon-capable countries to also seek limited IAEA inspections in return for wider benefits.

While the inspection agreement will bring New Delhi closer to international nuclear nonproliferation norms, experts warn that the so-called Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does little to limit the Indian nuclear weapons programme.

The IAEA Board of Governors is likely to adopt the agreement unanimously, Vienna-based diplomats said. Even India's regional rival Pakistan has indicated it will not ask for a vote on the issue, they added.

Granting IAEA inspectors access to more nuclear facilities and materials is part of the 2005 India-US nuclear agreement, under which India is to separate its nuclear energy sector from its weapons programme. In return, the US will seek to change international nuclear export control rules so that India can receive civilian nuclear technology and materials from abroad.

Putting Indian power reactors under IAEA surveillance would "strengthen the global nonproliferation regime," Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, said Wednesday.

Experts take a different view. "So what's the point of safeguarding nuclear material in a state that already has the right to nuclear weapons?" asked Andreas Persbo, a researcher with VERTIC, an arms verification institute in London.

IAEA inspections in 14 out of India's 22 reactors currently operating or under construction would not restrain the nuclear weapons programme, since most of the facilities to be monitored play no role in making material for atomic bombs, said Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based international security think tank IISS.

But Ashley Tellis, a US expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who helped to negotiate the US-India pact said that an ideal deal in which India would have given up its nuclear weapons would have been possible "maybe in a different universe."

Instead of curbing the Indian military nuclear sector, experts are afraid that countries such as Pakistan, Iran or North Korea might also seek deals where they agree to IAEA inspections limited to civilian facilities, while gaining access to international nuclear technology supplies.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asked the United States to treat his country like India. "And if they want to give the nuclear status to India, we would also expect the same for Pakistan, too," he said at the Carnegie Foundation in New York.

India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel have atomic weapons but find it difficult to import nuclear materials and technologies, as they are not members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). For that reason, they cannot receive such sensitive items, according to the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group of nuclear exporting states.

North Korean media said their country should be treated like other nuclear weapons states that are outside the nonproliferation treaty.

If Iran one day developed an atomic bomb, as western countries fear, it might also look for India's treatment in the IAEA as a model, Fitzpatrick said.

While India and the US see the safeguards agreement as a step forward towards implementing the US-India nuclear deal, a European diplomat said it meant "resuscitating a safeguards system that we believed was dead."

India chooses which civilian facilities to declare to nuclear inspectors, an approach that the IAEA generally ended in the 1970s by asking members to declare all their facilities and materials.

The Indian safeguards agreement might give other states the idea that this was a concept is the norm, the diplomat feared.

Before the US-India deal can be approved by the US Congress in Washington, India has to conclude a separate agreement on more intrusive IAEA inspections.

Also, the Nuclear Suppliers Group has to make an exemption for India. It will meet on August 21 and 22 to discuss the issue, according to diplomats. (dpa)