A day after China told the outgoing Barack Obama administration that Nuclear Suppliers Group’s membership cannot be given as a farewell gift to India, American ambassador to India Richard Verma exuded confidence that the Donald Trump Government would be able to overcome the Chinese hurdle.
He said President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and a lot of other people had worked in pushing India’s membership to the NSG and new US Government will continue to work on it.
“This is something we will keep working on together. There is a lot of support for India’s membership as we said we strongly support India’s accession in the NSG. These things are complicated, they take time, they are multilateral. We will have to continue to work with those countries including China which may have some concerns. But I believe, at the end of the day, we will get there. All of these things have been very, very important for President Obama and I believe they will continue to be top priority (of the Trump administration),” Verma said at an event of Vivekananda Foundation.
In a strong-worded statement on terrorism, Verma asked Pakistan to dismantle safe havens of terror groups operating from its soil.
“On its western border, India’s faces a daunting challenge from terrorist groups operating from inside Pakistan. Some of these groups, including lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the Haqqani Network, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, have also targeted US and Afghan security forces in Afghanistan. The US continues to press Pakistan at the highest levels to take effective action against these groups, and just last month we expanded our terrorism designation against leT to include two additional leT leaders and leT’s student wing. Actions such as these underscore my nation’s commitment to aggressively target these groups, which threaten the security of India, Pakistan, and the region,” Verma said.