Seoul: India's NSG bid faced a last major obstacle in China which stuck to its opposition even as every other (47 of 48) member supported New Delhi's application at the first session of the two day plenary meet in Seoul.
The Indian application for membership to the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group was taken up at a post-dinner special session.
Beijing used a procedural block to hold up the meeting for five hours in the morning. Finally, it was decided to discuss a heavily worded agenda on "political, legal and technical issues of non-NPT countries' membership.
Japan led the way by first raising India’s membership at the NSG meeting.It was seconded by Argentina which presented a report praising India’s nuclear nonproliferation record.
Questions and doubts by other fence-sitting countries dissolved in the course of the evening but China remained adamant even after finding itself isolated over its call for a criteria-based membership.
The consensus emerged through the evening's discussions, with countries like Ireland, Switzerland and Austria, even Brazil raising questions on process - but these whittled down to supporting India's candidature.
Barring China, every other member of BRICS including Russia, Brazil and South Africa backed India's membership bid.
Argentina and South Korea along with several key member nations, including the US, Britain, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, France and Russia, have been supportive of India's NSG aspirations.
Turkey, seen as Pakistan’s closest friend in the NSG after China, said it supported membership for both countries.
Earlier, Prime Minister Modi, who met President Xi in Tashkent on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Uzbekistan capital, urged China to judge India's application on its "merit". The 45-minute Modi-Xi meeting was almost entirely devoted to the NSG issue
"Prime Minister Modi urged China to make a fair and objective assessment of India's application and judge it on its own merit," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup briefed reporters in Tashkent.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the opposition to India's membership won't impact bilateral ties between them.
"We do not believe that it is an issue concerning the bilateral relationship between China and India," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told the media, adding that the two countries "have agreed that we would make joint efforts to develop closely knit relationship".
China had been insisting that if any concession is given to India, the same should apply to Pakistan which has an alleged bad track record on non-proliferation after it was said to have sold atomic weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
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