WASHINGTON: The United States has asked Pakistan to put its case before all 48 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, instead of seeking individual endorsements for joining the NSG.

Earlier this week, Pakistan sent letters to US officials and lawmakers, urging them to support its bid for joining the exclusive club that controls access to sensitive nuclear technology.

Apparently neither India nor Pakistan is likely to join the NSG in the near future as New Delhi failed to win over China while Islamabad failed to persuade Washington to back its bid.

Editorial: US support for India on NSG

The 48-nation NSG held a special meeting in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday to consider applications from the two South Asian nations, both of whom posses atomic weapons and have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

On Thursday afternoon, when it became obvious that China will not allow India to join the NSG, a spokesman for the US State Department urged Pakistan to present its application before the entire group.

“That’s a collective decision reached by the members of the group,” said the spokesman, Mark Toner, when asked why the United States was not backing Pakistan’s application.

“India is also pursuing membership into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but certainly, if Pakistan wants to pursue that, that’s something for all the members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to consider,” he added.

US President Barack Obama, who met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House on Tuesday, announced after the meeting that the United States strongly supported India’s bid to join the NSG.

Later, a senior US official told a news briefing that Washington wanted the NSG to induct India during its annual plenary session which will be held in Seoul, South Korea, on June 23-24.

Last month, Pakistan also submitted its membership application in Vienna so that it could be considered with India’s application at the special session.

Reports from Vienna suggest that China is demanding a non-discriminatory criterion for offering NSG membership to other nations: all interested states should be asked to sign the NPT first because exempting anyone would weaken the entire non-proliferation regime.

The Chinese argue that if the United States and other powers insist on exempting India from this requirement then they should do the same for Pakistan, as not doing so will accelerate a dangerous nuclear race in South Asia.

Despite China’s objection, US officials have clear instructions from President Obama to ensure that India becomes an NSG member during this month’s plenary session.

When a journalist suggested at the State Department briefing that the US position on this issue may further strain already tense relations between India and Pakistan, Mr Toner urged Pakistan to stop terrorists from using its soil to conduct operations inside India.

“We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions,” he said.

“And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory.”

Mr Toner said President Obama had also discussed India-Pakistan relations with Prime Minister Modi at their White House meeting.

“Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so it’s not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game — or zero-sum terms,” he added.

“I think it’s important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that’s Pakistan, that’s India, and it’s also Afghanistan.”

Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations, he said, continued to be “an area of collaboration and cooperation” between Washington and Islamabad.

In reply to another question, Mr Toner said a US delegation was currently in Pakistan to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan. A recent US drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansour would also be discussed during this visit, he added.

“They will talk about some of the recent activities that included the strike that took out the Taliban commander — and our ongoing concerns about security along the Pakistan-Afghan border, and more broadly our desire to see an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process,” said the US official.

“We do believe that that is, ultimately, the way to bring about peace and to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan, and that remains an area of focus. But we’re also going to, obviously, talk about other areas of cooperation on counterterrorism with Pakistan.”

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2016