Ban on Azhar not just our concern, but has widespread international support: India tells China

NEW DELHI: Imposing sanctions on terrorist Masood Azhar is not solely an Indian concern but has widespread international support, New Delhi told Beijing during a bilateral strategic dialogue.

The talks also saw China assurance that it was open to India’s application to the Nuclear Suppliers Group though its’view on procedures and processes’ were different at the moment.

Foreign secretary S Jaishankar, who led the talks with Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Zhang Yesui and his team, said that the rationale behind the application for sanctions on Masood Azhar was explained to Beijing. “Pointed out today that this was really being pursued by other countries, not by India alone. The fact that other countries were pressing this application showed that there was broad international support for this and concerns about Masood Azhar’s activities,” the foreign secretary said after the talks.


On the NSG membership Jaishankar said: “The Chinese side underlined that they were open to India’s application for NSG membership but they had their view of procedures and processes and these were somewhat different from where we are at the moment and where we think most of the group is at the moment.” The talks also touched on Afghanistan, multilateral diplomacy, counter-terrorism and nuclear issues. “We had a particularly useful session on Afghanistan where we spoke about cooperating on developmental activities including capacity building in Afghanistan,” Jaishankar said. The Indian side highlighted that Chinese FDI had gone up and exchanges at defence, security, economic and academic levels had increased. “There was recognition that the investment climate had improved in India. Chinese FDI has gone up substantially.”