The Netherlands today reaffirmed its support to building consensus among members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) over India’s bid to be part of the elite grouping.

The Netherlands today reaffirmed its support to building consensus among members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) over India’s bid to be part of the elite grouping. A joint statement released after the talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte said the two sides reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening disarmament and global non-proliferation efforts. The Netherlands congratulated India’s accession to the Missile Technology Control Regime, Wassenaar arrangement and the Australia Group, three export control regimes.

“In order to further strengthen global non-proliferation, the Netherlands reaffirmed its strong support to building consensus among regimes’ members on the issue of India’s membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” the statement said. India’s bid for entry into the 48-member NSG is being opposed by China citing that New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The two sides also agreed to hold the bilateral cyber dialogue in 2018 with the intention to discuss issues, including internet governance, and data protection, cyber security policy and Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) cooperation, and international capacity building.

The leaders welcomed the deepening of cooperation on cyber-security through the signing of an MoU between The Hague Security Delta and Hyderabad Security Cluster, India’s first Cyber Security Cluster, the statement said. Modi and Rutte called for further collaboration between the nations in the space sector and underlined the importance of space technology as an area of focus for finding solutions to deal with challenges in areas such as food security and climate change.