SEOUL: The plenary meeting of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) ended 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, theUK, France and a majority of countries in the nuclear trading group.
Meanwhile, Switzerland also took a U-turn on its stand and joined the group of countries that are opposing India’s entry into the elite nuclear group.
The issue of India‘s membership was not formally discussed at the NSG meeting this week, Wang said on Friday.
The United States, which has a nuclear cooperation deal with India, considers it a nuclear power that plays by the rules and is not a proliferator, and wants to bring Asia‘s third largest economy into the 48-member group.
India already enjoys most of the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation deal with Washington.
On Friday, on the sidelines of the plenary meeting of the NSG, Wang stressed China considered it important to handle new memberships under a consensus and that there was no move yet to allow a non-NPT state to join.
“International rules will have to be respected, big or small,” Wang told Reuters. “Big like NPT. Small like the rules and procedures of this group.”
“The important question of which we are concerned, is how to deal with the question of participation of countries within the group of non-NPT states. It‘s a formidable task.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue on Thursday at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a regional summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but there was no breakthrough.
One diplomat at the NSG plenary in Seoul said the group’s outgoing chairman, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi, would act as a “facilitator” to continue to search for an accession deal.
Opponents argue that granting India membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate India s rival Pakistan, an ally of China‘s, which has responded to India‘s membership bid with one of its own.
