'Pakistan supports cross-border terrorism, relations with China abnormal': EAM S Jaishankar's big remark

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recently said that India wants to ensure that its relations with all countries advance without seeking exclusivity. China, however, falls into a different category, he added in his address at the MIREX, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic. He was on a visit to Dominican Republic from April 27 to 29.

At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic, Jaishankar said that for the first time in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a comprehensive view that spanned the entirety of the Indian Ocean and its Islands, news agency PTI reported.

These subsequently became the building blocks for the Indo-Pacific vision that emerged thereafter, he said.

"To the north, India has been similarly pursuing a strategy of connecting to Central Asia more effectively and this has taken the form of structured engagements across multiple domains," he added.

"These concentric circles of priority give you a conceptual sense of Indian diplomacy and one that we have pursued very assiduously over the last decade. But at a higher level, we are also practising the approach of engaging all significant centres of power, such multi-alignment reflects the reality of multi-polarity," he stated.

The External Affairs Minister further mentioned that each engagement has its own particular weight and focus.

"Whether it is the US, Europe, Russia, or Japan, we are trying to ensure that all these ties advance without seeking exclusivity," Jaishankar said without mentioning China.

He further added that China falls in a somewhat different category because of the boundary dispute and the currently abnormal nature of the ties with the country. That is an outcome of a violation of agreements regarding border management by them, he mentioned.

He said the rise of China and India in a parallel timeframe is also not without its competitive aspects. "When in other regions bid for Africa, the Pacific or Latin America, much of what is happening can be explained as the emergence of India's potential global footprint. In many cases, it is the result of autonomous forces such as business or mobility," he elaborated.

In his address, Jaishankar went on to explain how India approaches the world and engages Latin America and what should today's India and tomorrow's India mean.

"India's most pressing priorities are obviously in its neighbourhood. Given its size and economic strength, it is very much for the collective benefit that India takes a generous and non-reciprocal approach to cooperation with smaller neighbours. And that's exactly what we have done in the last decade under Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he said.

India has seen a dramatic expansion in connectivity, contacts, in cooperation across the region.

The exception to this of course is Pakistan in view of the cross-border terrorism that it supports, he mentioned. Whether it is the Covid challenge or more recent debt pressures, India has always stepped up for its neighbours, Jaishankar said, citing the case of Sri Lanka where India extended more than $4 billion of economic support during the island nation's worst economic crisis in decades.

Jaishankar said that India is developing the concept of extended neighbourhoods in all directions. With ASEAN, this has taken the form of what New Delhi calls the Act East Policy that has opened up a pathway to a deeper engagement with the Indo-Pacific that is being pursued, amongst others through a mechanism called the Quad comprising India, Japan, the US and Australia.

(With agencies inputs)

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