India, US relationship has strength and comfort level to discuss all issues: EAM
Washington: The relationship between India and the US has the strength and comfort level today to discuss all the issues including those on which the two sides don't agree with, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday as he concluded his trip to the American capital.
Jaishankar was here to attend the 2+2 ministerial dialogue along with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The US delegation was led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. The 2+2 ministerial was preceded by a virtual meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden.
In an interaction with a group of Indian reporters here, Jaishankar said that the discussion ranged on all issues, which of course was dominated by the situation in Ukraine, developments in India's neighbourhood and the Indo-Pacific, in addition to bilateral issues. However, the human rights issue was not part of the discussion, he asserted.
In response to a question, Jaishankar strongly refuted the notion that the situation in Ukraine is going to hurt India-US relationship.
"I don't think it'll be stressful on India-US relations. Look, I'm here today. ..I've been sort of fairly open and clear about our positions and our perspectives. I would say, in all fairness, so have been the Americans. Today, our relationship has the strength and the comfort level to discuss a lot of issues. We may not agree on all issues. We have the strength and the comfort to deal with that as well," he said.
There has been a huge change in the India-US relationship. "And that really allows us to do much more
with each other and engage each other in a much different way than we would have done 10 years ago or 20 years ago, he said.
When asked about India's role in the Ukrainian peace process, Jaishankar said New Delhi brings to the process its goodwill of having relations with multiple parties — with Russia, with Ukraine, with Europe with America and many of the neighbours of Russia and Ukraine as well. "Our intent is to be helpful..., he said.
Giving an overview of his discussions with officials of the Biden Administration, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, his bilateral with Blinken, Commerce Secretary and US Trade Representative, the 2+2 ministerial and his attendance to the Modi-Biden virtual, Jaishankar said a lot of the time went to the situation in Ukraine.
"The US side presented their perspective, their analysis, their sense of what they think is likely to happen. The conflict and the peace, the diplomacy involved in it, the peace talks, the progress or the lack of progress, were a set of issues which came up," he said.
Observing that the Ukraine conflict has also had a very direct impact on the global economy, he said they discussed the energy situation at some length, food security of all countries, and what could be done, along with the humanitarian situation and what different countries are doing.
"Other than the Ukraine situation, we spent a fair amount of time on the Indo-Pacific reviewing what had been the progress in September," he said, adding that the preparation is on for the next Quad summit meeting in Japan.
