China welcomes President Pranab Mukherjee, but won’t budge on NSG issue
BEIJING: China would not budge from its stance on blocking India’s entry into the powerful Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in the present circumstances and would also treat its “all-weather friend” Pakistan in the same manner, because, like India, Islamabad has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT), Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday ahead of President Pranab Mukherjee’s four-day China tour starting on Tuesday.
“China along with other counties have been maintaining that there should be a thorough disucssion on whether non-NPT countries can join the NSG, and this decision should be made on consensus. This applies to all non-NPT countries including Pakistan,” Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman of the ministry said at the media briefing.
Mukherjee will arrive in the southern city of Guanzhou on Tuesday evening, and will reach Beijing late on Wednesday afternoon. He will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders before leaving Beijing on Thursday.
India recently said there was no binding rule that NSG membership is open only to signitories of NPT. It pointed out that France had become a member of the NSG without signing NPT at that time.
Countering the Indian argument, Hua said, “France was a founder of the NSG so the issue of its accpetance to the NSG did not exist.” China has been building nuclear power plants and conducting other commercial deals in the nuclear energy sector, which some observers see as a violation of the principals that drive the non-proliferation movement. But it wants to block India because a NSG membership will make it possible for New Delhi to access sensitive technologies and materials from different parts of the world, analysts said.
Welcoming Mukherjee, Hua said, “We hope we can use the President’s visit this time to depeen our practical cooperation and forge even closer partnership for devleopment.”
The foreign ministry also indicated that it wants to join hands with India to influence international affairs, and hopefully take some steps to counter what it regards as a dominant role played by the US.
“China and India are emerging markets with increasing influence on the international stage. Both the countries are major force behind world peace and development. We are glad to see that in the past few years China and India have been moving forward on bilateral relations in a sound and stable way,” she said.
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