All about NSG criteria

China wants Pakistan also in NSG

With inputs from Agencies

In U-turn, China says NSG open to non-NPT nations

NEW DELHI: After months of banging on that India cannot join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) because it hasn't signed the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), China did a huge about-turn on Monday saying the door is open for new members who haven't signed that treaty."The door is open for the admission of the non-NPT members. It is never closed. It is open. But the members of the NSG should stay focussed on whether the criteria should be changed and whether non-NPT members should be admitted into the NSG," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a media briefing Tuesday.Hua was repeating - almost verbatim- what India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday. The Indian minister said China is not opposed to India's entry into the NSG but is only focussed on criteria procedure to India's membership to the elite nuclear club."The Chinese side understood India's need to develop nuclear energy," Hua said. She was referring to Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar's visit to China last week, where he expressed New Delhi's wish to join the NSG."The door is open. The room is there. We never said we are against who (a country). We did not target any country, India or Pakistan," Hua said.In fact, China and Pakistan have been closely coordinating moves to block India's entry into NSG, the group's sources told ANI in May.Beijing is using Pakistan's non-starter position with the NSG - as Pakistan, too, hasn't signed the NPT and is a notorious proliferator- to block India's application by saying that it would either support NSG entry for both India and Pakistan, or for none of them.US sources then told news agency ANI that they are disappointed with China's tactics of "using Pakistan's non credentials with the NSG to settle scores with India".The US sources said that India's non-proliferation credentials can never be compared with Pakistan's, as the latter has a history of "selling nuclear technology to rogue states like Libya". They point to the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Dr A.Q. Khan, and his global nuclear trade.The NSG is a body concerned with reducing nuclear proliferation by controlling the export and re-transfer of materials used to make weapons.The NPT is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.