TEHRAN - China has said that it never recognized India and Pakistan as nuclear powers and ruled out extending such a status to North Korea following the unsuccessful second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam.

“China has never recognized India and Pakistan as nuclear countries. Our position on this has never changed," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a media briefing on Friday.

His remarks came in response to a question whether China would recognize North Korea as a nuclear state like India and Pakistan as talks between Trump and Kim broke down over latter's refusal to give up two nuclear processing plants.

China has been blocking India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on the ground that New Delhi has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are some of the nuclear powers that have refused to sign the NPT while building their nuclear arsenal.

NPT was conceived with an objective to prevent nuclear proliferation, work towards full disarmament and promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

India has refused to sign the treaty as it found it ‘faulty’ and a ‘club of nuclear haves and have-nots’. Pakistan maintains that it will not sign as long as its regional rival India does not.

China has called for a two-step approach which states that NSG members first need to arrive at a set of principles for the admission of non-NPT states into the NSG and then move forward discussions of specific cases.