US urges NSG members to support India’s membership

TIL Desk/World/Beijing- The United States has urged members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to support India’s membership into the elite grouping. “The United States calls on Nuclear Suppliers Group participating governments to support India’s application when it comes up at the NSG plenary, which I think is next week,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference.

“I am not going to get ahead of how that’s going to go or hypothesise and speculate about where it’s going to go, but we’ve made clear that we support the application,” Kirby said in response to a question. During the US visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, US President Barack Obama welcomed India’s application to the 48-member grouping.

The US has been pushing for India’s NSG membership. Earlier, ahead of a meeting here US Secretary of State John Kerry had written a letter to the NSG member countries which are not supportive of India’s bid, saying they should “agree not to block consensus on Indian admission”.