Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 17
A Chinese attempt to corner India ahead of its high-profile 2+2 meeting of its Foreign and Defence Ministers with its US counterparts in Washington on Wednesday fell flat. France took credit for the postponement of a China-proposed United Nations Security Council (UNSC) closed-door meeting that was being confidently claimed earlier in the day as slated for Tuesday.
China had appended a request to all UNSC members to heed Pakistan’s letter seeking an urgent meeting on Kashmir. Had the UNSC taken up the matter, it would have not just meant diversion of diplomatic capital but would have also taken the sheen off the 2+2 meeting, an approach that New Delhi believes is propelling it into the big league.
“Kashmir will not be discussed in the Security Council today. Our position has been very clear. The Kashmir issue has to be treated bilaterally. We have highlighted this several times recently, including in New York,” French diplomatic sources told The Tribune here today.
One of the primary issues on the table at the India-US 2+2 meet is the plan to further invigorate the Quad — a loose maritime-based alliance of India, Australia, the US and Japan — primarily around China’s coastal underbelly to ensure free navigation rights around the islands being claimed by China in South China Sea and the Sea of Japan. India has already held a ministerial-level two-plus-two meet with Japan.
However, sources said the postponement means the issue will come up again and India will have to again rely on its diplomatic allies, basically some of the UNSC Permanent Members, to either ward off the attempt altogether or ensure it is held behind closed doors.
The Chinese attempt, however, sits uneasily with the recent Mamallapuram informal summit between PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as the willingness by Beijing to hold a meeting later this month of their special representatives on the border issue.
Meanwhile, India strongly rejected a resolution adopted by the Pakistan National Assembly that criticised the citizenship law and asked New Delhi to revoke its “discriminatory”’ clauses. The Ministry of External Affairs called the resolution a “poorly disguised effort” to divert attention from Pakistan’s “appalling treatment” and “persecution” of its religious minorities. “It seeks to provide justification for Pakistan’s unrelenting support for cross-border terrorist activities in India. We are confident that such attempts will fail,” added the MEA.
The MEA also reacted strongly to a statement by Pakistan PM Imran Khan at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva. “Khan has once again peddled familiar falsehoods at a multilateral platform to advance his narrow political agenda by making gratuitous and unwarranted remarks on matters entirely internal to India. It should now be clear to the entire world that this is an established pattern of his habitual and compulsive abuse of global forums,” said MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar.
India slams Pakistan resolution on CAA
India on Tuesday strongly rejected a resolution adopted by the Pakistan National Assembly that criticised the citizenship law and asked New Delhi to revoke its “discriminatory”’ clauses. The Ministry of External Affairs called the resolution a “poorly disguised effort” to divert attention from Pakistan’s “appalling treatment” and “persecution” of its religious minorities.