Modi told UN secretary general that it was important for India to become a member of the NSG because nuclear energy is investment-intensive. The UN secretary-general, however, is unlikely to be able to do anything about it because the opposition is from China, which is political rather than technical in nature

BIARRITZ: While PM Narendra Modi's meeting with US President Donald Trump in Biarritz on Monday passed off without any reference to Kashmir, another major highlight of the day for India was Modi's renewed pitch for admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The PM made the appeal to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres during their meeting on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France.

During a brief conversation, Guterres criticised India's dependence on coal power plants at a time when the country was also talking climate change. Modi retorted that India was moving towards renewable energy.

However, base-load power comes only from thermal and nuclear sources. India is currently building 10 new nuclear power plants, as well as two complexes of six nuclear power plants each by Russia (Kudankulam) and France (Jaitapur), respectively.

Modi told Guterres that it was important for India to become a member of the NSG because nuclear energy is investment-intensive.

The UN secretary-general, however, is unlikely to be able to do anything about it because the opposition is from China, which is political rather than technical in nature.

While Kashmir didn't come up between Modi and Trump, and neither during the PM's conversation with his British counterpart Boris Johnson, it did during the meeting with Guterres, who has been fairly critical of India in recent weeks.

Taking a careful stand on Pakistan, Modi said that he had called his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan after his election victory to say that the two countries would work to remove illiteracy, poverty and disease from the subcontinent. "Both India and Pakistan should come together to fight against poverty and for well-being of our people. India and Pakistan were together before 1947 and I'm confident that we can discuss our problems and solve them together," the PM added.

Briefing journalists, foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said the 40-minute meeting between Modi and Trump focused on trade and energy. "There was no discussion on Kashmir during the bilateral talks." On trade, he said, "India was taking a forward-looking position."

But with Guterres, Gokhale said Modi had clarified India's position with regard to the internal nature of changes in Article 370, but that India had made no international change. India, Modi said, was not being bellicose in the region or on the border, but the real concern was cross-border terror from Pakistan.

India is already ready to send commerce minister Piyush Goyal to the United States for some time now. Gokhale said the two leaders decided that Goyal would go before Modi's America visit in the coming weeks.

Other sources said that Trump and Modi also held a conversation on Afghanistan.