INDIA IS TOUGH ON CHINA, QUIET ON UKRAINE, AND WARY OF MYANMAR

 

At a meeting of Quad Foreign Ministers in Melbourne on Friday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar joined counterparts from the United States, Japan, and host Australia to send a clear message to Beijing, highlighting their pursuit of a "shared vision" to uphold "a rules-based international order, free of coercion — one based on respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty."

But, unlike the three other Foreign Ministers — US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi — Jaishankar took a more nuanced stance in public after the meeting.

On Myanmar, Jaishankar highlighted the threat of insurgency along the Indo-Myanmar border, recalling a recent instance in which a Colonel and his family, including a kid, were slain by militants in an ambush. He also made it clear that India opposes "national sanctions." A number of Myanmar junta figures have been sanctioned by the United States.

He remained diplomatically silent on Russia's threat to invade Ukraine, whereas Blinken said there are "troubling signs of Russian escalation, including new forces arriving at the Ukrainian border," and that they are "in a window where an invasion could begin at any time, including during the (Winter) Olympics in Beijing."

Payne voiced Australia's "grave worry" over Russia's military buildup along Ukraine's border, as well as the country's "strong support" for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Ukraine was mentioned during the Quad summit, according to Japan's Hayashi, and "sovereignty and territorial integrity" have always been backed by Japan.

"I would just add that, as my colleagues have observed, we are for something, not against somebody," Jaishankar said when asked about the recent meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Ukraine was also not mentioned in the Quad Foreign Ministers' joint statement.

"We remain profoundly concerned about the crisis in Myanmar and ask for an end to violence, the release of all those arbitrarily incarcerated, including foreigners, and unrestricted humanitarian access," the joint statement said. We reiterate our support for ASEAN's efforts to find a solution in Myanmar, and we urge the military administration to quickly adopt ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus and return Myanmar to a democratic path. We call on the world community to join forces in order to bring an end to the violence."

"I believe it's brutally evident that the events there are deeply, deeply disturbing, and profoundly troubling to all of us," Blinken said after the meeting. The regime has stepped up its repression and bloodshed."

"I think we all agreed on the necessity of the democratic transition that was ongoing in Myanmar," Jaishankar said in answer to questioning. And plainly, the fact that the country has taken a different path is something that all of us are concerned about. We all, I believe, fully support the ASEAN position on Myanmar and their engagement initiatives."

"However, as an immediate land-border neighbour, we are concerned, and India is concerned." We have some very specific concerns about Myanmar that guide our thinking, including concerns about insurgents operating there who killed a senior military officer and his family a few months ago; concerns about Covid and the lack of vaccination on our common border; and concerns about a humanitarian situation resulting from food shortages."

"So I think those are considerations that we take into account, and where we are worried, we don't follow a policy of national sanctions," he added, emphasising that the EU does not support US sanctions against Myanmar. Hayashi stated that the leaders of the four Quad countries will meet in Japan in the first half of this year, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"As leading democracies, we pursue our shared vision of upholding a rules-based, non-coercive international order based on respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, rule of law, transparency, freedom of navigation in international waters, and peaceful resolution of disputes," Jaishankar said.

"We denounce the use of terrorist proxies for cross-border terrorism and urge countries to work together to eliminate terrorist safe havens; disrupt terrorist networks and the infrastructure and financial channels that sustain them; and halt cross-border movement of terrorists," the Quad statement said. In this context, we urge all governments to ensure that territory under their control is not used to commit terror attacks, and to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice as soon as possible."

"We reiterate our condemnation of terrorist attacks in India, including the 26/11 Mumbai and Pathankot attacks," the statement said, adding that they reaffirmed UN Security Council Resolution 2593 (2021), which states that "Afghan territory should not be used to threaten or attack any country, shelter or train terrorists, or plan or finance terrorist acts, with such ungoverned spaces posing a direct threat to the Indo-safety Pacific's and security."

"As we enter the third year of the Covid-19 epidemic, Quad partners have together supplied more than 500 million vaccination doses," the statement read. We have agreed to donate over 1.3 billion vaccination doses globally as a group. The Quad Vaccine Partnership's rapid progress in growing vaccine production at the Biological E Ltd plant in India, which expects to produce at least 1 billion vaccines by the end of 2022, is encouraging. We expect the first batch of Quad-supported vaccines to arrive in the early half of this year."