In what was a clear snub to China, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar avoided holding any bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) sessions in New York. Top diplomatic sources told The Daily Guardian that Beijing keenly wanted a bilateral interaction between Jaishankar and Wang, for which the Chinese diplomats were reaching out to their Indian counterparts as well. “However, the EAM did not accept the request to hold one-on-one with Wang Yi on the UNGA sidelines,” sources said. “Jaishankar decided not to hold talks with Wang with the sole objective to send out a clear cut message about New Delhi’s displeasure over Beijing’s misdeeds along LAC and at the UNSC where it blocked the proposals seeking blacklisting of Pakistan-based terrorists on several occasions.
Before attending BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) foreign ministers’ meeting in New York on Thursday, Jaishankar just shook hands with Wang just for ‘photo op’ in what is just a customary practice. “But EAM did not go for any one-on-one talks with the Chinese foreign minister as holding a talk would have diluted India’s strong stand against Beijing vis-à-vis its bid to block proposal to blacklist terrorists at UNSC,” sources said. “During the BRICS meeting, Jaishankar used the opportunity to remind his counterparts from the group member countries including China that territorial integrity and written pacts on sovereignty of other nations must be respected,” sources said.
Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also chose not to interact with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisastion (SCO) summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan. There have been no bilateral meetings between China and India at several recent multilateral events in what is viewed as New Delhi’s strategy to send out a strong message to Beijing.
Jaishankar planned more than 50 meetings on the sidelines of UNGA but China was not included in the list of one-on-one interactions. This particular fact must have given a much stronger message to China, say officials. Also, Jaishankar took a veiled dig at China over its putting on hold the blacklisting of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Sajid Mir as a “global terrorist”. Sajid Mir is India’s most wanted terrorist and was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Jaishankar said some countries have facilitated impunity “when it comes to sanctioning some of the world’s most dreaded terrorists.” Jaishankar said politics should never ever provide cover to evade accountability. “Nor indeed to facilitate impunity. Regrettably, we have seen this of late in this very chamber, when it comes to sanctioning some of the world’s most dreaded terrorists.”