New Delhi: When it comes to India’s relations with China during the next five years, the government will focus on resolving pending issues along the border with China, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said in a media interaction on Tuesday (June 11).
Jaishankar was responding to a question about how he thought India’s relations with China and Pakistan would evolve in the next five years – that is, during the third Modi government’s term.
“The years-long issue with Pakistan is that of terrorism – of cross-border terrorism – and how [we can] find a solution to it, so that … that cannot be the policy of a good neighbour,” he said on his outlook for India-Pakistan ties.
India and China do not agree with each other’s representations of what exactly the Line of Actual Control, the name of the border between the two countries, looks like.
A military standoff over the border’s western sector has been ongoing since early 2020, when India claimed Chinese troops had moved beyond their traditional positions along the border near Ladakh, resulting in multiple skirmishes with Indian patrolling teams.
The deadliest conflict took place on June 15, 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a hand-to-hand fight at the Galwan valley, which led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops.
India has insisted that bilateral relations are “not normal” due to the tensions over the border and maintains that the standoff will only be resolved once there is disengagement and de-escalation at two remaining spots in Ladakh.
On talks with Pakistan, India insists it is willing to restart dialogue with its neighbour only after cross-border terrorism ends.
This position was reinforced by Jaishankar, who said last year that “victims of terrorism do not sit together with perpetrators of terrorism to discuss terrorism”.
Jaishankar became external affairs minister in 2019 and retained his post yesterday when the president directed the allocation of portfolios in the council of ministers on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice.
During his press interaction on Tuesday, Jaishankar also said that looking ahead, the two “guiding axioms” of ‘Bharat first’ and ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ – which he described as Modi’s ideas – would guide Indian foreign policy.
“We are very confident it [the axioms] will position as as vishwabandhu, a country that is in a very turbulent world, in a very divided world, a world of conflicts and tensions, it would actually position us a country which is trusted by many, whose prestige and influence will grow, whose interests will be advanced,” he said.
