China opposes India’s NSG bid, says signing NPT a must

TIL Desk/World/Seoul- The plenary meeting of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) ended here today with no decision on India’s membership bid as divisions persisted over admitting non-NPT members with China leading the opposition to it.

China’s stand that India’s membership application cannot be considered because it has not signed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was backed by nearly 10 other countries which effectively torpedoed India’s bid although it had the strong backing of the US, the UK, France and a majority of countries in the nuclear trading group. Earlier, the chief Chinese negotiator, Wang Qun continued to vehemently oppose India’s membership of NSG.

The anti-India stand taken by China again today clearly shows that Chinese President Xi Jinping has not responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s urgings in Tashkent yesterday that Beijing should support India’s case. Seeking China’s support for India’s membership, Modi had urged Xi to make a “fair and objective” assessment of India’s application which is before the Seoul plenary as the two leaders met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.