India holds fire on China opposition to NSG bid, hopes to get dragon nod

NEW DELHI: India is refraining from openly criticising China despite it emerging as the biggest opponent to New Delhi's NSG membership bid. The avalanche of adverse public opinion against China has rattled both Beijing and New Delhi.

Sources said demonising China would have the effect of Beijing doing exactly what India doesn't want it to do. In the past few days, India has eased up on China — making it easier for Chinese scholars to come to India on conference visas, which has been a long-standing grouse against the Indian system. In addition, Chinese sailors docking off India would find it easier to come ashore with quick visas being available to them. The India-US joint statement conveniently dropped reference to South China Sea to refrain from official China-bashing.

If India completes the legal scrubbing of its paperwork for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in time, India and Pakistan could join the SCO summit this year. In that case, sources said, there is a very good chance of PM Narendra Modi going for the summit scheduled to be held in Tashkent on June 23-24. If Modi does travel, there is a chance of him lobbying personally with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The NSG plenary is scheduled for June 20-24 in Seoul. The SCO secretary-general Rashid Alimov was quoted as saying India and Pakistan had completed their agreements in principle for joining.

Also read: One step forward: India's NSG bid to be taken up in next plenary in Seoul

The preliminary technical meeting of the NSG in Vienna on Thursday discussed the new applications from India, Pakistan and Namibia. The discussions, according to sources, recognised the merit in the Indian application but some countries raised the matter of process and criteria. Sources said there were about five countries left as holdouts, even as India is racing against time to convince them.

Also read: To be or not to be: Will India's NSG dream takeoff?

Many in the government acknowledge that the Indian exercise to lobby for NSG membership came late. That's largely because much time was wasted in the past few years - first India could not take it up seriously, hobbled as it was with other nuclear issues; then, the previous government decided to approach all four regimes - NSG, MTCR, Wassenaar and Australia Group - together. This made it impossible to move on any one.

In the last year, the government had a relook at the NSG bid and decided to unbundle them. MTCR and NSG were put on priority. Last week, MTCR, in a "silent procedure", cleared hurdles for India's accession. This has made NSG entry marginally easier for India. In 2008, India had made a formal commitment to abide by non-proliferation commitments in a letter then foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had written to the NSG. That letter helped burnish India's non-proliferation credentials. It's not clear what extra commitment India can make before the group in 2016.