NEW DELHI (INDIA) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that Washington and New Delhi should work together to confront the threat posed by China to security and freedom. He said this ahead of talks with Indian leaders in the capital.
Pompeo arrived in New Delhi on Monday accompanied by Defense Secretary Mark Esper for a strategic dialogue. This comes at a time when Sino-Indian ties remain strained with Indian soldiers confronting Chinese forces on their disputed Himalayan border.
“Today is a new opportunity for two great democracies like ours to grow closer,” Pompeo said before the discussions with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
“There is much more work to do for sure. We have a lot to discuss today: Our cooperation on the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, to confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s threats to security and freedom to promoting peace and stability throughout the region.”
China dismissed the allegations made by Pompeo. “We urge Pompeo to abandon his Cold War mentality, zero-sum mindset, and stop harping on the ‘China threat’,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin during a briefing in Beijing.
As many as 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in June on the frontier in the Himalayas, creating an anti-China wave across the country and steering the Narendra Modi government closer to the US.
New Delhi this month invited Canberra to join the naval drills it holds each year with the US and Japan, dismissing Chinese concerns that the exercises create instability in the region.
“Our focus now must be on institutionalising and regularising our cooperation to meet the challenges of the day and uphold the principles of a free and open Indo-Pacific well into the future,” Esper said.
Both the US and India will ink a military agreement later on Tuesday giving New Delhi access to state of the art US satellite and map data for better accuracy of its missiles and drones.
