China sulks over India’s entry into MTCR, warns Indian to behave

Defense analysts have said that building this railway line wouldn’t take India more than a few months given its massive rail network and the Indian Railways’ years of experience in facilitating ticket-less travel.

Reports say China, which blocked India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), is lobbying to become member of the MTCR group.

China had voiced its opposition to Mexico’s suggestion for an early NSG meeting on non-NPT countries’ membership but the proposition found support from a large number of countries including the US. This has become the primary principle of the organisation.

He said in 2008, the Manmohan Singh government had after signing the Indo-US Nuclear Civil Nuclear agreement managed with the US to get a waiver from the NSG.

Officially India blamed China, without naming it, for the failure of its membership bid.

The editorial further questioned West strongly backing India. The news didn’t even make a ripple among the Chinese public.

“US backing adds the biggest impetus to India’s ambition…The US is not the whole world”.

He said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif personally wrote to 17 PMs opposing India’s bid to get a berth in the club of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology.

“But we can do much more to accelerate the pace, to continue to liberalise markets and to improve investor confidence”, he said at the Atlantic Council US-India Trade Initiative Workshop here.

He said because of his consistent efforts like the visit to Lahore or inviting the Pakistan Prime Minister here that he longer has to convince the world about India’s stand on terrorism.

In a hard hitting editorial, Global Times said it was rules not China that prevented India’s entry into the 48-nation elite nuclear trading body.

“Some Indians are too self-centered and self-righteous”. India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), setting out its post-2020 climate actions, envisages 40% non-fossil power generation capacity by 2030.

The editorial, however, did have a soft word for the Indian government.

The article said the accusations raised by Indians “did not make any sense”, but praised the government of India for behaving decently at the meeting.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sensing two crises on hand – Subramaniam Swamy’s diatribes and China’s open hostility at NSG plenary, gave a television interview for soft banter with an otherwise acerbic anchor. “The country has been dragged through 10 years of jobless growth by the Congress-led UPA government”, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 2014 election manifesto said (pdf).

The Prime Minister asserted that India’s efforts for engagement with Pakistan is on with peace as supreme objective, but the security forces have full freedom to answer back in whatever manner they have to.

Meanwhile, foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told reporters in New Delhi that China’s tough stance on NSG could adversely impact the Sino-Indian relationship.

“When these numbers of our people are being slaughtered, it’s a clear open attack on India by Pakistan”.