Narendra Modi Xi Jinping
Reuters

China has indicated that it will block India again in its bid to getting the chief of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Masood Azhar, blacklisted by the United Nations. China, last year, had fought Delhi on blacklisting Azhar at the international forum.

Beijing has also made it clear that it will continue preventing India's entry to a prestigious international bloc, the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which controls nuclear trade across the world. China, last year, was among the top counties which said that India cannot join the NSG.

Both these issues have contributed to increasing the tensions between the countries. China blocking India on these issues is seen by many as a bailout of its Pakistan, which is Beijing's long-term ally.

India believes that JeM was behind many deadly attacks conducted on its military bases over the past few years.

masood azhar
In picture: Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar.Reuters

The JeM chief currently lives in Pakistan and India has been trying to get him and his organisation banned by the United Nations Security Council, which would prevent Azhar from travelling internationally, and would also result in global freezing of his assets. 

Ahead of an NSG session earlier this month, China had maintained that nothing had changed in its stand on India's entry into the group. Beijing argues that India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, the global pact on arms control, which is a pre-requisite for the group's members.

Beijing says that is such rules are moulded for the benefit of India, then China must benefit from this situation too, according to NDTV.

On Tuesday, China said that the UN is still divided over Masood Azhar's blacklisting because there has not been enough evidence to implicate him. A UN committee will again take India's request to ban Azar next month. 

Modi Sharif
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pak Prime Minister Nawaz SharifReuters

"At present, some members have a disagreement over the listing matter. And China stands ready to remain in coordination and communication with the relevant parties on this issue," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang said.

India's Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, however, said that the "burden of proof" is not on India to convince the UN officials of Azhar's terrorism activities. The US, the UK and France have also pressed for action against the JeM chief.

"It is not that the burden of proof is on India to convince. The sponsors (the US and other countries) seem to be very well convinced, otherwise they would not have taken the initiative to move the proposal," Jaishankar said.