Relations between India and China has deteriorated in the last 18 months and is unlikely to get better, a former US ambassador to India has said and he shared the perception of many Indian strategic thinkers that Bejing is using Pakistan to slow India’s rise.
“I think it’s fair to say now that China-India relations are not very good and in fact have been deteriorating for about last 18 months,” former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill said in a conference call with reporters in a briefing on Obama’s India visit.
“The Indians have a long list of Chinese transgressions, which in my judgment are accurate, having to do with Chinese policy on Kashmir and on the border dispute between the two countries and the so-called ‘ring of pearls’ of Chinese quasi-military installations in Bangladesh and in Sri Lanka and in Pakistan and so forth,” he said.
Mr Blackwill is currently the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations — a prestigious US-based think tank.
“So the relations aren’t very good between the two. The Prime Minister keeps saying, and I think deeply believes, that there’s no reason why India and China could not have a good long-term relationship. But it isn’t clear that same degree of enthusiasm for that end state is felt in Beijing,” he said.
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‘Big positive impact or disappointment’
Washington, Nov. 4: Given the sensitivity of Indians on UN Security Council aspirations, US President Barack Obama during his forthcoming visit to India will either make a big positive impact or disappoint it, a former top American diplomat to New Delhi has said.
“Will the President, while he is in India and probably while he is speaking to the Parliament, utter the words, ‘The United States supports India’s permanent membership in a reformed UN Security Council’ or not?
“If he does, it’ll have a very, very positive effect on both the people of India, and on the national security elite of India. If he does not, they’ll be disappointed,” Robert Blackwill, former US ambassador to India, told reporters.
“I’m not now going to do the merits of the case on that, but he will either make a big positive impact or disappoint them,” Mr Blackwill said, who currently is Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations — a prestigious US-based think tank.
As the US President arrives in Mumbai later this week, Mr Blackwill said Indians will be watching most carefully for the President’s position on the Security Council and on the entities list. —PTI