India’s concern on Russia-China links to influence its thinking on global issues: US official

PTI

Washington, April 12

India, which faces a “very tense situation” along the Line of Actual Control with China, has concerns about the “tight links” between Russia and China and it is going to influence its thinking while taking decisions on global issues, a senior US official has said.

The comments came during a press call by the senior administration official on President Joe Biden’s virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

“What I’ll say is that Prime Minister Modi took the opportunity to share his views in a pretty candid way about what’s going on,” the official said.

“We know that Russia has concerns - we know that India has concerns about the links between Russia and China. India, of course, is facing a very tense situation along the Line of Actual Control. And when India sees the tight links between China and Russia, that’s obviously going to impact their thinking,” the official said.

The official was responding to a question on whether Biden specifically asked India to take a side on the Ukraine crisis.

“Whether there was - there was no sort of concrete ask and concrete answer, but the leaders were able to step back and have a pretty detailed and candid exchange of views,” the official said.

The official said that Biden “took the opportunity to continue the close consultations we’ve been having with India at a number of different levels across our government and over the course of many weeks on Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine”.

“So, India is going to make its own judgments. Prime Minister Modi brought up the situation, again, in his public remarks, and there was discussion. I mean, the President shared his views, and Prime Minister Modi shared his views,” the official said.

There has been some disquiet in Washington over India’s position on the Ukraine crisis as well as its decision to procure discounted Russian oil.

Unlike its Quad partner countries, India has not yet condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it abstained from the votes at the UN platforms on the Russian aggression.

India has been pressing for an immediate cessation of violence in Ukraine and seeking a resolution of the crisis through diplomacy and dialogue.

“The US and India are partnering and consulting on mitigating the most destabilising impacts, both on global food supply and other commodity markets,” the official added.

In recent days India made some “pretty strong statements in New York condemning the killings of civilians, supporting calls for an independent investigation”, the official said.

“India is also providing humanitarian relief material to Ukraine, including medicine and other supplies,” the official added.

On India’s energy purchases, the official said, “We don’t think India should accelerate or increase imports of Russian energy. And the US is ready to support India, remain in a conversation with India about its diversification of imports.”

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