India did its best to respond to Chinese aggression: Pompeo

New York: India has done its best to respond to China’s confrontation and the world must unite to act on Beijing’s pattern of aggressive behavior seen in Ladakh, Bhutan and around Asia, said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“The Indians have done their best to respond” to China’s “incredibly aggressive action,” which fits a pattern, Pompeo said at a news conference in Washington.

He said that he had spoken to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar several times about the Chinese aggression in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control last month.

He said that Beijing’s attack on India has to be put in the context of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “General Secretary Xi Jinping and his behavior throughout the region, and indeed, throughout the world. I don’t think it’s possible to look at that particular instance of Chinese Communist Party aggression in isolation. I think you need to put it in the larger context”.

After a Foreign Office Consultation between India and the US on Monday, the State Department said Jaishankar and Under Secretary of State David Hale discussed “ongoing threats” to the international order and agreed to “endeavor to support each other’s objectives”.

Pompeo referred to the boundary and maritime disputes launched by China from the Himalayas “to the waters of Vietnam’s Exclusive Zone, to the Senkaku Islands, and beyond, calling them “unequalled anyplace else in the world.”

“There aren’t many neighbors that could satisfactorily say that they know where their sovereignty ends and that the Chinese Communist Party will respect that sovereignty. That’s certainly true now for the people of Bhutan as well.”

Image courtesy of The White House

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