Don’t give nuclear status to India and Pakistan: China

Daily Times Monitor

BEIJING: China on Tuesday said it was not in favour of welcoming India and Pakistan into the five-member exclusive nuclear club and hoped the international community would stick to principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as well as the spirit of the UN Security Council resolution passed soon after the South Asian nuclear tests on May 1998, website rediff.com reported on Tuesday.

“The international community should stick to the spirit and principles enshrined in the NPT as well as the consensus reached in UN Security Council resolution 1172,” Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang told a group of Indian journalists in Beijing.

“In our region we have seen many wars and conflicts, which have been either due to historical reasons or mutual no confidence. So we believe that peace and development should be the main principles and policies for the countries in this region,” he said when asked to comment on New Delhi and Islamabad’s quest to be recognised as nuclear powers along with Britain, China, France, the United States and Russia. Shen also gave a similar response when asked for China’s reaction to Indian External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh’s statement that India, Pakistan and China should have a “common nuclear doctrine”.

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