India's NSG bid: PM Modi to meet China's Xi Jinping, say sources

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 23 in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan on the sidelines of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), sources said on Tuesday.

SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organization, founded in 2001 by leader countries China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The meeting is going to be a crucial one as India tries harder to press the world countries specially China in favor of its NSG bid.

After External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj cleared the air saying that China was not opposing India’s NSG entry but it was just raising the procedural issues, dragon on Monday retorted on the same.

Pouring cold water on India’s NSG bid, China said that no such agenda was on Seoul’s plenary meeting.  China has been opposing India’s entry on the grounds that it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This meeting between Jinping and PM Modi could hold the key to Chinese approval for the consensus at Seoul meet.

According to sources, this meeting is going to be an exclusive one-on-one discussion to win support of China for India’s NSG bid. While on the other hand, US has been persistently by the side of India and has even asked the member countries to consider and support India’s NSG application.

Earlier Russia’s Vladimir Putin had also extended his support in India’s NSG membership bid by stating that Russia would raise this matter in the meeting.  But it would be immature to conclude anything before the meeting, will India succeed in getting the NSG membership or not, only time will tell.