Ashok Tuteja
Tribune News Service New Delhi, September 7
India is unhappy with China over the manner in which Beijing tried to sabotage a consensus over India-specific waiver at the NSG meeting in Vienna.
India’s strong sense of displeasure is likely to be conveyed to Beijing in no uncertain manner during talks between the Indian leadership and the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi.
The Chinese foreign minister arrived in Kolkata today on a three-day visit to India. He is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and external affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi tomorrow.
According to official sources, China had all along given an impression to New Delhi that it would not be an obstacle at the NSG although it did not explicitly support the Indo-US nuclear deal. “The Chinese leadership, right from the level of President Hu Jintao, had clearly indicated to us that they would not come in the way of a waiver at the NSG but what they actually did at the meeting came as a big surprise to us,’ sources added.
One could appreciate the ideological non-proliferation concerns of countries like New Zealand, Austria and Ireland, which opposed a clean waiver for India, but sources wondered how China could take any such stand since the country itself was widely regarded as a major nuclear proliferator.
China obviously did not want the Indo-US nuclear deal to fructify, as that would mean India occupying its rightful place in the global arena
as a major economic and political power, which Beijing would find difficult to digest. India’s views on the Chinese attempt to play a ‘spoilsport’ at the NSG were well articulated by
National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan in
interviews to television news channels. He said India, which was surprised by China’s stand on the nuclear deal at the NSG, would convey its disappointment to Beijing. “The Chinese foreign minister will come here and we will of course express some kind of disappointment ... Saying that we expected more from them,” he said.
Nararyanan, however, hastened to add: “We are not a one issue government” and just because China did not support India “we are not going to have problems with them”. India, he said, could not choose its neighbours. “We have China and Pakistan as neighbours and with both of them we desire to have the best of relations.”
