External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday denied that India is attempting a ”peace plan” or doing any mediation to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict, adding that New Delhi is only trying to facilitate bringing the two parties to the negotiating table.
”We are doing multiple conversations and are very transparent about telling each party at the end of the conversation, saying that this is what we’re going to tell the other party. We think that at this point of time (this is) the most useful. We also believe that we articulate the sentiments and the interests of the Global South-125 other countries- who have found their fuel costs, their food costs, their inflation, their fertilizer costs impacted by this war,” he said at the Doha Forum 2024 on ‘Conflict Resolution in a New Era’.
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The foreign minister said India has always held the view that this war is not going to be solved on the battlefield, that at the end of the day people are going to return to some kind of the negotiating table..
‘The sooner, the better. Our effort has been to facilitate that to the extent possible,” he added.
Mr Jaishankar said ”the general sort of the needle” is now moving more towards the reality of a negotiation than the continuation of the war. ‘
‘We are trying to do the bit I told you about, why it’s important for diplomacy to come forward. We are actually doing-going to Moscow, talking to President Putin; going to Kiev, engaging President Zelensky; meeting them in other places; trying to see if we can encourage and find common threads which can be picked up at some point of time when the circumstances are right for it to be developed,” he added.
On India’s ties with US President-elect Donald Trump, he said New Delhi had a solid relationship with the first Trump administration. However, there were some issues, mostly trade related issues, but there were a whole lot of issues on which actually Mr Trump was very international.
Mr Jaishankar said Mr Trump was very forward leaning and also reminded the audience that it was actually under Mr Trump that the Quad was restarted.
”So if you look at the Indo-Pacific today, I mean, certainly President Biden built on it. But if you look at the Indo-Pacific today, in fact, it’s an area where the United States made new commitments as indeed did all of us. So, I would say, from our perspective, there’s a certain personal relationship between Prime Minister Modi and President Trump. I would say in terms of politics, we don’t really have divisive issues in terms of our political outlook,” he added.
He said India’s convergence with the US way outstrip any differences that the two countries have.
