At the end of its two-day plenary here, the NSG declared its “firm support” for the “full, complete and effective” implementation of the NPT as the cornerstone of the worldwide non-proliferation regime, a clear indication that no exception will be made in the case of India.
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Bilkulonline.com, New Delhi, June 24: Opposition parties on Friday slammed the Narendra Modi government over its approach to securing Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership for India, saying that its desperation had caused an embarrassment to the country and it failed on the foreign policy front.
Mexico, where Modi visited earlier this month backed India’s membership on Wednesday.
The main bone of contention is that India is not a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is one of the criteria for NSG membership. Ironically, nuclear pundits have been vocal about India’s clean nuclear track record as an important credential for its membership but history tells us otherwise. NSG membership would also put India on a firmer footing to propose the idea of plutonium trade for its thorium programme that has been waiting in the wings.
Since the NSG works on consensus, even one country’s vote against India will dash the country’s hopes of joining the elite group of nations.
Mr Modi urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to assess India’s application on merit during their bilateral meeting on the first day of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
While no one was willing to go public, China’s open hostility to India’s global aspirations is now out in the open, which will make it hard, coming as it does after China’s refusal to sanction terror leader Masood Azhar. “It is also our understanding that the broad sentiment was to take this matter forward”, said the spokesperson on NSG Plenary meeting in Seoul.
INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi begged China to back his country’s bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) of nations yesterday.
When asked to comment on United States envoy Richard Olson’s remarks that Indian role in Afghanistan was overestimated in Pakistan, the spokesman said: “Our concerns on the matter are very much genuine and based on facts”.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, however, has recently said that Beijing’s primary focus for the time being is making India and Pakistan full members of the organization after the organization made a decision to admit them a year ago.
The governments of Russian Federation and China should speed up the process of linking the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Silk Road Economic Belt, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last month.
The NSG decided that Switzerland will assume the Chairmanship of the NSG from 2017 to 2018 and will host the next plenary.
Indian diplomats, led by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, are in Seoul to press India’s case, although they are not the participants at the plenary in the absence of India’s membership. Paragraph 1 (a) of the September 2008 decision states that the decision on India contributes to the “widest possible implementation of the provisions and objectives of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons”.
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India’s relationship with China has been more adversarial than amicable.
