Agni missiles broke UN limits: Chinese media

“India has broken the UN’s limits on its development of nuclear weapons and longrange ballistic missile,” the ruling Communist Party-run tabloid Global Times said in its editorial. 

“The US and some Western countries have also bent the rules on its nuclear plans. New Delhi is no longer satisfied with its nuclear capability and is seeking intercontinental ballistic missiles that can target anywhere in the world and then it can land on an equal footing with the UN Security Council’s five permanent members,” it said. 

“India is ‘promising’ in vying for permanent membership on the UN Security Council as it is the sole candidate who has both nuclear  capability and economic potential,” it said. “China should realise that Beijing wouldn’t hold back India’s development of long-range ballistic missiles,” it said. 

Agni-V, a 5,000-km range intercontinental ballistic missile, is regarded as a strategic missile targeted at China as it can reach almost all parts of the Chinese mainland. 

The editorial said that “Chinese don’t feel India’s development has posed any big threat to it”. The daily known for its sabre-rattling rhetoric said “India wouldn’t be considered as China’s main rival in the long run” due to vast disparity of in power between the two countries. But at the same time it suggested that the “best choice for Beijing and New Delhi is to build rapport”. 

However, while accusing India of violating limits imposed by UN on nuclear and long range missile development, “if the Western countries accept India as a nuclear country and are indifferent to the nuclear race between India and Pakistan, China will not stand out and stick rigidly to those nuclear rules as necessary”, it said.