Focus ought to be on stopping preventing: EAM Jaishankar on Ukraine

By PTI

NEW DELHI: The greatest option to cope with the battle in Ukraine could be to deal with “stopping the fighting and getting the talking” to maneuver ahead and India’s place on the disaster is greatest positioned to advance such an strategy, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar mentioned on Wednesday.

His feedback got here in response to a query at an interactive session on the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier international coverage and geo-economics convention.

Jaishankar on Tuesday countered criticism of India’s place on Russia’s actions in Ukraine, saying the Western powers have been oblivious to the urgent challenges in Asia together with final yr’s developments in Afghanistan.

“We spent a number of time yesterday on Ukraine and I’ve tried to elucidate what our views are but additionally defined that in our minds the easiest way ahead is to deal with stopping the preventing, getting the speaking and discovering methods of transferring ahead.

We assume our decisions, our positions are greatest positioned to advance that,” he mentioned.

India has not but publicly condemned the Russian assault on Ukraine and has been calling for the decision of the battle by means of dialogue and diplomacy.

In his tackle, Jaishankar talked about India’s 75-year-long journey after Independence and highlighted how the nation performed a key position in selling democracy in South Asia.

Reflecting on areas the place India got here up brief, the exterior affairs minister listed an absence of satisfactory consideration to human sources and manufacturing and talked about that most likely not a lot consideration was given to laborious safety as a part of international coverage.

Asked about what ought to be the precedence for the nation within the subsequent 25 years, Jaishankar mentioned functionality growth in all potential areas ought to be the central focus.

“We have to be confident about who we are. I think it is better to engage the world on the basis of who we are…This idea that others define us, somehow we need to get the approval of other quarters, I think that is an era we need to put behind us,” Jaishankar mentioned.

He hoped that India will probably be “deeply more international” when it comes to its commitments, duties and roles within the subsequent 25 years.

“We should not be looking at the world with a sense of entitlement. We need to earn our place in the world and which to a certain extent, therefore, comes to the issue of how the world benefits from the growth of India. We need to demonstrate that ” he mentioned.

The exterior affairs minister was requested what India expects from the world.

“There is a lot of talk about reliable and resilient supply chains and people speak about transparency and trusted technologies. If India could do more and show the rest of the world that the world benefits by India being bigger,” Jaishankar mentioned.

“So we need to develop stakes in our future whether the rest of the world is concerned. I think some of that is happening for strategic reasons obviously, but we need to make more of it happen especially for economic reasons,” he added.

Showcasing India’s 75-year-long profitable democratic journey, Jaishankar mentioned the alternatives made by India have had a bigger affect globally.

“There was a time in this part of the world that we were pretty much the only democracy. If democracy is global today, we see it is global today, I think, in some measure, that credit is due to India,” Jaishankar mentioned.

He famous that it’s also truthful to look again on the place the nation got here up brief.

“One, clearly we did not pay the kind of attention to our social indicators, our human resources as we should have. Two, we did not concentrate on manufacturing and technology strengths as we should have. And three, in terms of foreign policy, probably, in the mix of various elements, we did not give as much importance, as much weight to hard security as we should have,” he mentioned.

The exterior affairs minister mentioned India contributed to the spreading of democracy in South Asia.

“We would like to see more prosperity in South Asia. If India has been in a sense example of democracy or promoter of democracy in South Asia, we would now like to be part of a larger lifting tide so that the rest of South Asia grows along with us,” Jaishankar mentioned.

Asked in regards to the scarcity of wheat within the wake of the warfare in Ukraine and if India wish to contribute to addressing the problem.

“We have a significant wheat production. We would obviously go into the global markets and try to compensate for the shortfalls as much as we can. It (Egypt) is one of the countries with whom we are talking,” he mentioned.