PM expected to push for India's NSG membership

New Delhi, Jun 3: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to strongly push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) during his visit to Switzerland, Mexico and the US -- countries that are part of the elite group that looks after critical issues relating to the atomic sector.

India has been pushing for membership of the 48-nation bloc for last few years and had formally moved its application on May 12. "This has been the objective we pursued for many many years. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago.

We are engaged with all NSG members," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. He said India was looking at a very major domestic expansion in nuclear power sector besides at a "very large" international collaboration with different countries and its entry into the NSG would help its objective of having clean energy.

Insisting India not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be linked to its bid for NSG membership, he said India fulfilled all its commitments relating to atomic sector. "We have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable.

The NSG has already made one exception for us. In a sense, our credentials have been examined, a judgement was arrived at in 2008. "In 2008, we gave some commitments, we gave commitments on separation of our nuclear programme, between civil and the strategic side.

We agreed to accept and implement additional protocol... we faithfully followed up," he said. The Foreign Secretary said granting NSG membership to India is a "logical next step". During his talks with the leadership of Mexico, Switzerland and the US, Modi is likely to seek support for India's membership bid at the NSG.

PTI